Steidl Joseph Beuys: Intuition!: Dimensions of the Early Work of Joseph Beuys, 1946–1961

This book examines the crucial period between Joseph Beuys’ return to his hometown of Kleve after World War II at the age of 24 and his appointment as a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1961. During this “incubation” phase, key themes relevant to his future work emerged, which now structure this book: biography as material for artistic forming; Beuys and poetry/romanticism; natural sciences: physics, chemistry, botany, zoology and geography; philosophy/anthropology Steiner; evolution; economics, capitalism, labor, politics. The aim of this book, along with the 2021 exhibition of the same name at Museum Kurhaus Kleve for which it is the catalogue, is neither to venerate a local saint of Kleve nor to topple an artist from an earlier generation. Instead it highlights the influences, ideas and caesuras that saw Beuys develop from a “sensitive traditionalist” into a “visionary social sculptor.”