Joseph Beuys

JOSEPH BEUYS (Germany, 1921–1986).
“Wirtschaftswerte”; FM-BV, 1937–1984.
Unique.
Features handwritten annotations, a blue stamp from the Free International University, and a red stamp from Insula.
Signed in the upper area.
Measurements: 14 x 12 cm; 43 x 33 cm (frame).

This piece belongs to the famous “Wirtschaftswerte” series (Economic Values) developed by Joseph Beuys in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in which the artist transformed everyday consumer products into works of art through minimal interventions, such as stamps, annotations, and his own signature. This multiple is based on a simple package of bay leaves from the former East Germany, an anonymous household object to which Beuys lends a new symbolic dimension. The artist’s intervention consists of adding the blue circular stamp of the Free International University (FIU)—an institution founded by Beuys in 1973 as an alternative platform dedicated to the exchange of knowledge and social creativity—along with his characteristic handwritten signature. Through this gesture, the commercial object sheds its utilitarian nature and becomes a reflection on value, the economy, and the mechanisms that determine what can be considered art. The “Wirtschaftswerte” series emerged from Beuys’s interest in basic food products from the GDR, whose packaging retained an austere and traditional aesthetic in contrast to Western consumerist logic.

Joseph Beuys was one of the most influential conceptual artists in 20th-century Europe. Trained at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, where he later served as a professor, he developed a multidisciplinary practice that encompassed sculpture, installation, drawing, and performance art. In 1962, he became associated with the Fluxus movement, emerging as one of its leading figures. In 1979, a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York cemented his international recognition. His work is currently part of the collections of institutions such as MoMA in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Guggenheim Museum, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, among others.