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 re-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 a new empathy with the animal and plant worlds, in his Energy Plan, for example. In drawings, sculpture, multiples and actions, he drew attention to the disenchanted relations to the earth’s energies, to animals, and not least to spiritual forces.

He thus anticipated trends that are of importance currently, now that our relationship between humankind and other species – like animals and/or plants – is being re-appraised, i.e., as equal, and an awareness of the spiritual energies of the earth and of nature is being seen as promoting reconciliation with, and the healing of a planet that is off balance.

Beuys’ 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 for the first time mainly on his extensive graphic oeuvre with the aim of showing how, within the framework of his individual mythology, Beuys 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