Joseph Beuys

Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Inc., New York
Andy Warhol Collection, New York
Sotheby's, New York, Contemporary Art, 3 May 1988, Lot 3410
Private Collection
Michael Werner Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art; Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Thinking is Form: The Drawings of Joseph Beuys, 1993-94, p. 244, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Each sheet is attached verso to the mount in the upper two corners. There is some staining due to the adhesive in the upper two corners of each sheet. Very close inspection reveals a few faint handling creases isolated in places.
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Executed throughout 1974, Untitled (Tagebuch March – December 1974) is a remarkable example from Joseph Beuys’ multifaceted and subversive body of work. The present work is archetypal of the German artist’s signature works; multiple sheets of paper from a diary have been signed, sketched on and variously annotated, evincing the artist’s predilection for drawing. Indeed, for the artist: “A drawing is the first visible form in my work, the first visible form of thought, the changing point from the invisible powers to the visible thing” (Joseph Beuys quoted in: Bernice Rose ‘The Drawings of Joseph Beuys’, MoMA, No. 13, Winter-Spring 1993, p. 17).

Attesting to its importance, the present work was acquired by Andy Warhol, and remained in the artist’s collection until the artist’s death in 1987. Having met in the late 1970s, the two artists admired and competed against each other, with the American painter creating a number of portraits of Beuys throughout the 1980s. Untitled is thus not only paradigmatic of Beuys’ revolutionary oeuvre, but was also part of the collection of one of the giants of 20^th century art.