![[Translate to English:] Braune Objekte auf braunem Hintergrund.](/fileadmin/_processed_/e/f/csm_62_JB_59.08_springender_Wolf_-_fallende_Bombe_1959_JvB_01_68e1783950.webp "Joseph Beuys, Leaping Wolf [Falling Bomb], 1959")
175 drawings by Joseph Beuys: Aeneas Bastian collection on long term loan to the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
In 2020, the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett received of one of the largest and most important privately own groups of drawings by Joseph Beuys with the long term loan of 175 Beuys paper works from the Aeneas Bastian collection. Assembled in direct proximity to the artist – Aeneas Bastian’s father Heiner was Beuys’s longtime secretary and confidant – the collection not only represents a superb oeuvre of 20th-century graphic art, but it also witnesses the close bond between the artist and the family Bastian.
This group of drawings is unique in its size and its quality. The works derive from the entirety of Beuys’s active period. The earliest sheet was created in 1945, the last just over a year before Beuys’s death in 1986. The Kupferstich-Kabinett plans to present the Aeneas Bastian collection in the next years from many perspectives, making it accessible in different analogue and digital formats. All of the works and the results of research on them will be documented and made available in an online archive.
The work Milky Way is one of Joseph Beuys’s rare pieces in which he works with Polaroids. The positive and negative face each other as mirrored images. The photographic image itself is overlaid with amorphous forms that appear to have been created by manipulating the chemical development process. The scratches, spots, and blooming effects evoke energetic principles, while the title suggests cosmic associations.
Photographic principles such as light, development processes, and the invisible play a fundamental, often metaphorical and alchemical role in Joseph Beuys’s work. Although Beuys is primarily known as a sculptor and performance artist, he understood these physical and chemical principles as universal laws of nature, which he directly applied to his expanded concept of art and the idea of social sculpture.
The fundamental physical principle of photography—the fixation of light on a surface—is reflected in Beuys’s endeavor to make fleeting energetic states in space physically tangible. Beuys understood light as a subtle form of energy; in his Plastic Theory—in which a specific form emerges from indeterminate chaos through the input of energy (heat, thought, movement)—light is the formative element.
Beuys’s interest in the chemical development process is at the forefront of this work—through its compact, hermetic form, the Polaroid becomes a battery in which the plastic process of transforming chaos into form takes place. In this process of transformation, which takes place within the hidden depths of the integral film, fundamental principles of isolation, energy transfer, and alchemy are condensed. The mystery inherent in both the development process and the transformation of the depicted subject is also the mystery of cosmic processes and interconnections, to which the reference to the Milky Way alludes.
The polar duality of positive and negative reflects a principle that recurs in many parts of his work, particularly in his multiples. The tension between the opposing poles generates energy: the arrangement itself becomes a battery. A philosophical duality is also expressed in this pair of opposites and in the work as a whole: the dynamic between reason and intuition, chaos and order, and the cyclical cosmic principle that arises from their interplay—life!
For more on the role of photography in Beuys’s work as a material trace of his temporary performances and actions, see the entry for no title (1985).
Both works were donated by Aeneas Bastian to the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden State Art Collections, on the occasion of the exhibition “Ich bin ein Sender… Die Zeichnungen von Joseph Beuys“ 2026.
The untitled work, which appears somewhat hermetic, initially seems like a readymade; the Polaroid negative is mounted centrally and appears as a sculptural artifact. One thinks one can make out a room in the photograph, but most of the image space is taken up by a wire mesh cage. However, the inverted image is interrupted by a strip of torn paper glued onto it, doubled by lines in silver bronze . This overlay acts like a crossbar and makes the depicted image even more difficult to interpret, while the silver also introduces energy to the piece.
Beuys very rarely worked with Polaroids himself, yet photographic images played a major role in his work. For his temporary performances and actions, photography served as a means of documentation, but also of communication. Just as his scores, diagrams, and notations record fragments of spoken words as traces, Beuys understood photography as part of the action; the latent image on the negative carries the invisible spirit of the past action into the future. Photographers such as Ute Klophaus, Gerhard Steidl, Klaus Staeck, and Lothar Wolleh documented Beuys’s exhibitions, travels, and political actions since the mid-1960s.
Since the 1970s, the rapidly evolving instant photography technology has been used by many artists. Andy Warhol photographed Beuys with a Polaroid camera (the original photo was taken by Christian Skrein)—from this snapshot, Warhol created his legendary silkscreen prints depicting Beuys wearing his characteristic felt hat and vest.
While the imagery in is difficult to interpret, the work evokes various associations with other elements in Beuys’s body of work—such as the role of the cage in performances like I like America and America likes me from 1974 at the René Block Gallery in New York, in which he spent several days together with a coyote in the barred gallery space.
The work appears even more significant in the context of his oeuvre as an embodiment of photographic principles that draw on elements of his “Plastic Theory” and his concept of energy—more on this in the work Milky Way (1982).
Both works were donated by Aeneas Bastian to the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden State Art Collections, on the occasion of the exhibition “I am a Transmitter: The Drawing of Joseph Beuys“ 2026.
The leaping wolf and the falling bomb can hardly be identified; instead, they resemble each other in their form and gray-green color, which one could associate as much with fur as with the military. Beuys’s focus is on the dynamic movement up and down, which he represents as a trajectory. As one of Beuys’s artistic leitmotifs, transition can be understood as the mutability of things. The wolf transforms itself into a bomb while the specific differences are blurred between organic and inorganic, between living and dead or deadly, so that at the center of the work stands the enriched energy of the symbolic and elemental forces wolf and bomb, shortly before their release becomes comprehensible.
![[Translate to English:] Braune Objekte auf braunem Hintergrund.](/fileadmin/_processed_/e/f/csm_62_JB_59.08_springender_Wolf_-_fallende_Bombe_1959_JvB_01_36720ecdd2.jpg "Joseph Beuys, Leaping Wolf [Falling Bomb], 1959")
The donation of an important drawing from the Aeneas Bastian collection to the Kupferstich-Kabinett marks the beginning of the cooperation between the Bastian family and the SKD. The sheet Room with Felt Sculptures is an exemplary demonstration of the artistic importance of drawings in the artist’s oeuvre. It was created in a decisive phase of his work, when Beuys was teaching at the academy in Düsseldorf, performing the first Fluxus actions, and had expanded his artistic work to felt, fat and wax. The drawing stages a spatial situation that seems to create an energetic field of tension between surfaces and lines, calm and movement. The work is an autonomous expression of artistic exploration, which is able to develop sculptural power in a small format.
![[Translate to English:] Linien und Flächen in brauner Farbe auf weißem Hintergrund.](/fileadmin/_processed_/f/d/csm_106_JB_63.07_Raum_mit_Filzplastik_1963_JvB_01_ab0e02f932.jpg "Joseph Beuys, Room with Felt Sculptures, 1963")
The drawings, in which Beuys developed his theoretical notions in graphic images, constitute an independent group within his oeuvre. These nine sheets were created during a conversation with Heiner Bastian about the “Theory of Sculpture” on January 31, 1971. Beuys sought forms of representation for the correlations between concepts like “form” and “thought” or “spirit” and “material” within the drawing process. The diagrams were intended to elucidate and visualize arguments in the conversation. They make it clear that Beuys understood graphic and verbal formulations as a common, interdependent intellectual process. Nevertheless, the marks are not immediately comprehensible to everyone. They are the expression of an intensive mental effort that found its first crystallization here. The conversation between Beuys and Bastian took place at the beginning of a long-term, mutually inspirational friendship. The draughtsman and the poet had known each other just three years at this point.
![[Translate to English:] Blatt mit feinen Skizzen.](/fileadmin/_processed_/0/c/csm_135_JB_71.02_Neun_Zeichnungen_zur_Theorie_der_Plastik_1971_JvB_01_a9710b6e17.jpg "Joseph Beuys, Nine Drawings for a Theory of Sculpture [I-IX] Conversation with Heiner Bastian, 1971")
This barely discernable representation is rendered on paper with a ballpoint pen and a ferrous substance. Clearly delineated lines alternate with the blurry edges of the watery medium; contingency and order are juxtaposed. It is unclear how Beuys began the drawing process – whether he was reacting to the ink with the ballpoint pen or to the ballpoint pen with the ink. The title is invested with a connection to Beuys’s “Theory of Sculpture.” It goes back to the belief that all material has a “Wärmecharakter” (a character defined by warmth) and is moved through the exchange of energy, thereby creating a balance of powers. This process is essentially procedural and communicative, which Beuys linked to the idea of sculpture.
![[Translate to English:] Ein dunkler Farbverlauf auf orangem Hintergrund.](/fileadmin/_processed_/6/b/csm_19_JB_52.01_Wachsplastik_1952_JvB_01_ee674b1561.jpg "Joseph Beuys, Wax Sculpture, 1952")