Forge, from Multiplizierte Kunst

Beuys has been an artist, teacher and theorist highly influential in international contemporary art in the latter half of the 20th century. He is a founder of the art movement known as Fluxus, and a practitioner and exemplar of happenings, and performance art. His work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy, and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social sculpture as a gesamtkunstwerk (synthesis of the arts) for which he claimed a creative, participatory role in shaping society and politics.

Krefeld, Germany