INHABITED MYTHS
Joseph Beuys
08-11-2025 - 08-03-2026
The life and work of Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) were greatly influenced by his personal experience of the Second World War. In his role as artist-shaman during the post-war period Beuys not only radically expanded the understanding of art in the direction of a socio-theoretical concept, but, like a therapist, also tried to awaken forgotten ways of perceiving and sensing, and to create an awareness of a cosmic bond through his works and actions.
As early as the 1960s, Beuys promoted, in his Energy Plan for example, a new empathy with the animal and plant worlds. In drawings, sculpture, multiples and actions, he drew attention to the disenchanted relationships to the earth’s energies, to animals and not least to spiritual forces. His extensive oeuvre is informed not only by Christian, shamanist and alchemical traditions, but also by mythological traditions and local customs. The exhibition “Bewohnte Mythen” focuses mainly on his extensive graphic oeuvre with the aim of showing how Beuys, within the framework of his individual mythology, made pre-Christian traditions, folk magic and folk medicine productive for the present day.
Curator: Dr. Nicole Fritz
In cooperation with the Museum Schloss Moyland, the main lender