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Joseph Heinrich Beuys, born in Krefeld in Germany on May 12, 1921 and died on January 23, 1986 in Düsseldorf, is a German artist. Joseph Beuys defines himself first as a sculptor even if he remains an extraordinary artist. He produces sculptures, drawings, performances, installations and holds numerous conferences, in a very politically engaged artistic ensemble. He also teaches in various institutes.

Joseph Beuys is the only child of a family of Catholic merchants. He lived his adolescence under the Hitler regime. During his training period, discovering by chance the work of the sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Beuys determined his vocation and the direction of his career. As if under the effect of a revelation, he realizes that a whole field of expression through sculpture had only barely been approached. He began studying medicine before being incorporated in 1940 into the Air Force on the Russian front where he served as a Luftwaffe pilot.

During the winter of 1943, his plane was shot down while flying over Crimea. Taken in by Tatar nomads who give him honey as food, he comes back to life, covered in fat and wrapped in felt blankets. This experience will resonate in all of his later work. We know today that this episode of war was invented by the artist in order to better contribute to his personal mythology. After several bombing missions, he was taken prisoner of war in Great Britain from 1945 to 1946.

Back in Germany, Joseph Beuys decided to devote his life to art. In 1947, he enrolled at the Düsseldorf Academy, where he studied with Joseph Enseling and Ewald Mataré. After his graduation in 1951, the brothers Franz Joseph and Hans van der Grinten began to collect his works and became his most important clients. After a serious nervous breakdown, he rested in the countryside from 1955 to 1957 with his collector friends. He painted many watercolors there which anticipate his next sculptures.

From 1958 to 1961, the essential of his vocabulary is set up, based on materials little used in art. He includes, in his installations, organic materials reminiscent of his plane crash: felt that insulates from the cold, grease symbolizing heat and energy, honey, but also beeswax, earth, butter , dead animals, blood, bones, sulfur, wood, dust, nail clippings, hair. The artist invents a character (recognizable by his hat and waistcoat).

Beuys was appointed professor of sculpture at the Düsseldorf Academy in 1961. He then participated in the Fluxus movement, which advocated "performance" and "environments". For Beuys as for the protagonists of this movement, art is life. The act, the art in action is more important than the work of art.

Beuys engages in various political activities. It campaigns for direct democracy, the environment, and other socio-political causes. In 1967 he founded the German Student Party and in 1970 the Organization of Non-Voters. He will even run for the Bundestag.

He was fired from the Düsseldorf Academy in 1972 for supporting protesting students, but returned to his post six years later. The following year, he founded the Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research. He develops his concept of "social sculpture" to help achieve a fairer society; he thinks that every man is an artist, and that if everyone uses his creativity everyone will be free. The 1970s were also marked by numerous exhibitions. In 1978, he was made a member of the Academy der Kunst in Berlin. In January 1986, the artist received the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize from Duisburg. He died on January 23, 1986, in Düsseldorf.