Joseph Beuys influenced the gallery’s history more than any other artist.
Our personal, convivial collaboration began in 1970 and was expressed first in the publication of the œuvre catalogue of his multiples a year later (together with Jörg Schellmann). This was followed by numerous editions, publications, exhibitions and the placement of important works, such as: “zeige deine Wunde” Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich), “Terremoto” (Guggenheim Museum, New York), “Das Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts” version 1 (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich) and version 2 (Tate Gallery, London), several vitrines (Kunstmuseum Basel, Tate Gallery London, Museum Brandhorst Munich), and a collection of 280 multiples (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich).
Important sculptures and objects have been transferred to the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung in Munich from our private collection, supplemented by additional sculptures as well as 150 drawings on permanent loan to the museum.
Today, Munich can take pleasure in the fact that it possesses groups of Beuys’ works rivalled by very few cities around the world, with the Beuys collections in the Pinakothek der Moderne and the works from Lothar Schirmer’s collection in the Lenbachhaus. For understandable reasons, up to the present day Joseph Beuys’s œuvre has evaded an increasingly speculative, American style art market. He radically altered art and its classical self-conception, opening it to new formal and spiritual possibilities. His commitment for the recreation of anthropological entirety, seeking to balance the rational and the intuitive, introduce creativity in every field of life, and bring about changes through personal responsibility and self-determination is more relevant today than ever before.
