Joseph Beuys at the Tate Modern

The new exhibition “Actions, Vitrines, Environment” at the Tate Modern in London features the work of Joseph Beuys and runs until 2 May 2005.

This major retrospective, the first of its kind for the German artist, brings together a wide range of installations and monumental works. Visitors will find a selection of Beuys’s works including Fond VII/2, a work comprised of eight piles of felt of varying height that is usually exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, and The Pack (1969), a “pack” of sleighs carrying rolls of felt behind a Volkswagen bus.The artist’s themes — survival, war, aid and hardship — are all conveyed as part of his vision of “social sculpture”.

Some 100 to 200 works by Joseph Beuys are sold at auction every year. However, the number of works up for auction has continued to fall in recent years. With supply down, the no-sales ratio has fallen (in 2004, only 25% of lots offered were bought in) and prices have soared (+65% in 2004 and +316% since 1997).While 57% of Beuys’s works are sold in Germany, collectors can find countless pieces elsewhere, for example in Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States. On average, drawings sell for EUR 2,550 and prints fetch EUR 470. Beuys’s most expensive sculpture is a bronze entitled Bett, which went under the hammer for the equivalent of EUR 420,000 on 2 June 2001 at Köln’s.

Needless to say, such a large exhibition cannot fail to boost prices for works by Beuys, considered as one of Germany’s most influential artists.