Joseph Beuys

Pearwood and ebony, with drawer, 75 x 83.5 x 64.5 cm. Limited to an edition of 9.

In 1953, Joseph Beuys designed three different tables and a bookshelf for a collector in Düsseldorf. Beuys expanded the first Monk table into a work of art and later integrated it into the legendary Block Beuys collection in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. The three tables and the bookshelf were first published in an edition in 2008, limited to 9 pieces each.

Pearwood and ebony. 55 x 92 x 65 cm. Limited to an edition of 9.

Joseph Beuys originally designed this table in 1953 for a collector in Düsseldorf. In 2008, it was published as an edition for the first time, limited to 9 pieces.

Pitch Pine, with two drawers. 76 x 133 x 57.5 cm. Limited to an edition of 9.

Joseph Beuys originally designed this table in 1953 for a collector in Düsseldorf. In 2008, it was first published as an edition, limited to 9 pieces.

Pitch Pine bookshelf. 266 x 220 x 34 cm. Limited to an edition of 9.

In 1953, Joseph Beuys designed this shelf (along with three different desks) for a collector in Düsseldorf. In 2008, Schellmann Art published all four pieces as an edition of 9 pieces each.

Metal tripod, ceramic socket and metal reflector. Height adjustable from 75 to 210 cm.

Joseph Beuys made this lamp in 1960 for his studio in Düsseldorf, Drakeplatz 4. Originally created out of necessity, Joseph Beuys used it for over thirty years.

EUR 1,800

Facsimile edition of Joseph Beuys's sketchbooks. Grano-lithographs in 4-12 colors, on Scholars writing papers, with 454 out of a total 1,168 pages bearing imagery and notations by Beuys. Each book 30 x 22 x 1.8 cm (12 x 8½ x ¾ in). Edition of 365, stamp-numbered on one of the last pages.

From 1958 to around 1965, Joseph Beuys worked on four sketchbooks, which he compiled under the title Projekt Westmensch. The pages of these books, which truly show the full range of his artistic output, are filled with drawings, texts, watercolors, lists of words and terms, concepts and themes with numerous notes for future projects. While many of the pages are directly related to his other works, there are some quite enigmatic forms, conceptual references and codes that present a fascinating challenge to both the viewer and professional art historians. The rhythm of the entries, which are often separated by long series of blank pages, gives a very intimate insight into the visual language of Joseph Beuys and his universal thinking.

EUR 2,500

Cast beeswax with finely distributed copper, 19.5 x 10.5 x 10.5 cm. Embossed "JOSEPH BEUYS", with estate's certificate, edition of 18 + 5 A.P. 
Schellmann 556

This edition by Joseph Beuys consists of a block of wax that depicts the crystalline form of a miner's lamp in negative relief. This “image” represents a combination of archaic symbols and naturally occurring forms. Bowl, flame, feathered diagram, sun disk and crystal merge into a single form and evoke a multitude of interpenetrating levels of meaning and possible associations. The title of the work is the name of a homeopathic ointment that Joseph Beuys himself often used.

The work is part of the collections of The Broad, Los Angeles, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Bavarian State Painting Collections.

Set of 3 lithographs, each print 76 x 56 cm (30 x 22 in). Edition of 90, each signed and numbered.
a Geschnatter unterhalb der Hütte (Chattering below the hut), b Sternbild des Bären (Constellation of the dipper), c Junger Elch über dem Haus des alten Müllers (Young moose above the old miller's house)
Schellmann 373-375

With this edition, Joseph Beuys expands his exploration of image, material, and symbolic structure into a three-part composition. The triptych format – historically associated with devotional painting – is reinterpreted through Beuys’s conceptual vocabulary, inviting reflection rather than veneration. Through the juxtaposition of restrained forms and charged materials, the work evokes themes central to his practice: transformation, energy, and the permeability between physical and spiritual realms. Created in 1981, Triptychon exemplifies Beuys’s ability to infuse minimal visual means with complex philosophical resonance.

The work is part of the collections of The Broad, Los Angeles, and the Bavarian State Painting Collections.

Transsibirische Bahn Film (16 mm, black and white, sound, 22 min.), in metal tin with railway labels, 3 cm x 37 cm Ø. Edition: 45 (+ 8 A.P.), signed and stamp-numbered on label.
Schellmann 325

This film edition documents an eponymous performance by Joseph Beuys in Humlebaek/Copenhagen in 1961/70, filmed by Ole John.

The work is part of the collections of The Broad, Los Angeles, and Harvard Art Museums.

Photographic negatives, one with two holes and marked with crosses in brown paint, between a transparent and an opaque glass plate in iron frame, 107 x 79 x 5 cm. Photographs by Ute Klophaus. Edition of 28 + VI, signed and numbered on paper tag attached verso on the piece. Some A.P., signed; + 5 H.C., signed and stamp-numbered on paper tag stamped Hauptstrom and sandwiched between glass plates.
Schellmann 218

In 1976, Joseph Beuys created the installation Zeige deine Wunde (Show Your Wound) for the Schellmann and Klüser Gallery in Munich. The work consisted of several objects arranged in pairs, grouped around the central element – a pair of mortuary tables. Later, while looking at the exhibition photographs, Beuys came up with the idea of mounting the negatives like “X-ray images” on an opalescent pane of glass for an edition. One film remained black and had two holes in it, reminiscent of an obscura camera – a reference to trauma, diagnosis and the medium of photography itself.

Lithograph, 65 x 85 cm (25½ x 33½ in). Edition of 185, signed and numbered.
Schellmann 190

For this edition, Joseph Beuys overlays a Paris Métro map with symbols that refer to ancient Gallic initiation rituals, merging contemporary urban structure with archaic forms of knowledge and transformation. By inscribing these signs onto a system of navigation, Beuys connects everyday movement through the city with deeper mythological and spiritual passages. As in many of his multiples, the reduced visual gestures carry conceptual weight, pointing to themes central to his practice: ritual, activation, and the transition from one state of consciousness to another.

This work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Broad, Los Angeles; National Galleries of Scotland; and Bavarian State Painting Collections.

Oil paint and butter on rag paper, torn hole, 76 x 56 cm (30 x 22 in). Edition of 90, each unique, signed and numbered.
Schellmann 186

This edition comprises 90 hand-painted works by Joseph Beuys, each differing subtly in the structure of the painted forms and in the shape of the sheep’s heads. This series exemplifies Beuys’s interest in repetition with variation – an edition that resists uniformity through the individuality of the artist’s touch. The motif of the sheep’s head, recurring throughout Beuys’s practice, invokes themes of guidance, vulnerability, and collective movement. By combining serial production with uniquely painted elements, the works merge the conceptual logic of the multiple with the immediacy of drawing and gesture. Created in 1976, the edition highlights Beuys’s ongoing inquiry into transformation, symbolism, and the expressive potential of simple, direct markings.

This work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Broad, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; National Galleries of Scotland; and Bavarian State Painting Collections.

Book with 81 bound-in and 1 loose granolithograph, folded; print 23 x 32 cm (9 x 12½ in). Print is signed and numbered, 9 different images. Edition of 100 each.
Schellmann 177-185

This lithograph book edition comprises Joseph Beuys’s response to the two rediscovered Codices Madrid by Leonardo da Vinci, published in facsimile in 1974. Across 81 lithographs after his pencil drawings, Beuys creates a dialogue with Leonardo’s notebooks while highlighting their differences. His finely drawn landscapes, bodies, and occasional machine-like forms trace energetic flows rather than precise descriptions, reflecting an intuitive, symbolic approach in contrast to Leonardo’s analytical method. The unorthodox cardboard cover – modeled after an American school notebook – underscores the work’s intended circulation as an accessible multiple rather than a private sketchbook.

The work is part of the collections of The Broad, Los Angeles; Harvard Art Museums; the National Galleries of Scotland; and the Bavarian State Painting Collections.

Part of Two Fluxus Objects (together with Green Violin)
Two tin cans, one with symbols in brown paint (Braunkreuz), 180 cm string, and paper tag. 204 x 10 x 10 cm. Edition: 24 + VI (6 with brown painted symbol also on second can), all signed and numbered on paper tag. 5 A.P., signed, not numbered.
Schellmann 136

Joseph Beuys described this edition to Jörg Schellmann and Bernd Klüser in 1970:

“With the two tin cans I took the most childish form of communication—just two cans—and marked them with a positive and a negative pole. These signs mean that the communication has to be seen in a universal context. The form of the cans can be stretched out; this alone provides the meaning. The cans cannot do that by themselves, they simply suggest a quite basic process: the concept of transmitter and receiver… that means two stations, whether they are single individuals or groups linked together. A piece of string connecting the two, a positive and a negative pole, and the two can communicate with each other. That doesn’t constitute a statement about what a contemporary theory of information might be. Tin cans can’t do that, but they can suggest it—initiate ideas—if an intuitive person encounters it.”

The title S – Ǝ abbreviates Sender – Empfänger (“Transmitter – Receiver”), distilling the work to its essential premise: communication as a dynamic, reciprocal process.

The work is in the collections of various major museums, including MoMA, New York; The Broad, Los Angeles; the National Galleries of Scotland; and the Bavarian State Painting Collections.

Part of Two Fluxus Objects (together with Telephone T––––Я)
Green painted violin, 21 x 60 x 9 cm. Edition: 24, stamped "Fluxus Zone West", unsigned, not numbered; a few violins were signed by Joseph Beuys.
Schellmann 135

The edition Green Violin is an action-object based on the violin played by Fluxus composer Henning Christiansen during the performance …Or should we change it, staged by Joseph Beuys and Christiansen at the Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach on 27 March 1969. Many of Beuys’s early Aktionen took the form of concert-like events, reflecting his close involvement with Fluxus in the 1960s – an international movement rooted in experimental sound practices and influenced by figures such as John Cage.

Sound and silence form recurring motifs throughout Beuys’s oeuvre. Green Violin embodies this ongoing exploration, capturing not only a moment of Fluxus collaboration but also the artist’s belief in performance as a catalyst for social and imaginative transformation.

The work is in the collections of MoMA, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Hardvard Art Museums; The Broad, Los Angeles; and the National Galleries of Scotland, among others.

Record master-mould (copper, nickel plated on incised side) with hole punched in the center, and two pieces of felt, each stamped with brown paint, in black cardboard box with label, 38 x 38 x 4 cm (15 x 15 x 1½ in). Edition: 77 (+ VII + 3 H.C.), signed and numbered on label on the box.
Schellmann 85

In his Sun Disc edition, Joseph Beuys distills one of his central metaphors – the sun as a source of energy, warmth, and renewal – into a pared-down, symbolic form. The circular disc, marked by Beuys’s characteristic use of materials and reductive gesture, reflects his belief in the transformative power of elemental forces.

Throughout his practice, Beuys associated the sun with creative and spiritual potential, linking natural energy to his wider concept of soziale Plastik, in which art becomes a catalyst for individual and collective change. Sonnenscheibe echoes this thinking: an object that appears simple yet carries the charge of Beuys’s broader philosophical project.

Sonnenscheibe is in the collections of The Broad, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Harvard Art Museums; and the National Galleries of Scotland, among others.

Zinc box with photograph, camera, felt. 41 x 30.5 x 15.5 cm, edition of 24 + V, signed and numbered. 
Schellmann 72

This edition features a photograph taken by Michael Ruetz, depicting the Beuys family watching the science fiction TV series Starship Enterprise. At the time, the family lived at Drakeplatz 4 in Düsseldorf, where their apartment and studio functioned as a shared space for work and life. Beuys covered the lens of the camera embedded in the lid of the zinc box with a felt disc, echoing his action Filz-TV, in which he obscured a television screen with felt. With this gesture, he responds to the "mechanical" gaze of the camera, transforming its outward view into an inward one through the insulating properties of felt. Inside the zinc box, two objects are mounted in the double strategy of parallel processes often employed by Beuys, both engaging with the act of seeing: television itself, the family captured by the camera and the photographer's eye, who in turn watch a film set in the future, and a handy box camera, whose function is altered by covering its lense, shifting its role from capturing an image to questioning the nature of vision itself. 

Blackboard, printed in silkscreen on both sides, stamped "Hauptstrom". 17 x 25 x 0.3 cm. Edition of 200, signature engraved on lined side of blackboard, unnumbered. 
Schellmann 52

In Schiefertafel (Blackboard) Joseph Beuys transforms a simple blackboard into a work that bridges drawing, notation, and conceptual thinking. Printed in silkscreen on both sides, this edition recalls Beuys’s long-standing use of blackboards in his Aktionen and lectures, where they served not merely as surfaces for writing but as tools for dynamic communication, diagramming ideas and relationships in real time.

Blackboards played a key role in Beuys’s broader practice – appearing in performances and public lectures throughout the 1960s and 1970s – where drawing became a form of active, participatory exchange rather than static representation.

Schiefertafel (Blackboard) is held in the collections of The Broad, Los Angeles; Walker Art Museum, Minneapolis; the National Galleries of Scotland; Harvard Art Museums; and others.

Linen box containing a Super 8 film, b/w, 25 with sound track b 10 photographs b/w 50 x 40 cm ea. c bottle with gelatin sealed with beeswax 16.5 x 8.5 cm Ø (6½ x 3¼ in dia.). Box: Stamped with brown paint, 41 x 52.5 x 10 cm. (The edition first came in a cardboard box; only the last part of the edition came in a linen box as shown here, but many of the earlier cardboard boxes were later exchanged against the linen one.) Edition: 100, signed and numbered on label in box.
Schellmann 37

With this edition, Joseph Beuys documents his performance Celtic + ~~~~~, presented on April 5, 1971, in a civil defense bunker in Basel. The work includes photographic and textual material from the action as well as a small bottle originally filled with gelatine used by Beuys during the performance – an organic material that has since liquefied over time.

Like many of Beuys’s action performances, Celtic + ~~~~~ combined elemental substances, symbolic gestures, and ritualized movement. The presence of the gelatine, shifting in form decades after the event, underscores Beuys’s interest in transformation, process, and the continued life of materials beyond the moment of performance.

Celtic + ~~~~~ is held in the collections of MoMA, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Broad, Los Angeles; Harvard Art Museums; and the Bavarian State Painting Collections, among others.

Fingernail impression of hardened butter in plastic box mounted on perforated gray cardboard, 24 x 21 x 1.5 cm ( 9½ x 8¼ x ½ in). Edition: 150, signed and numbered on the cardboard.
Schellmann 35

In this edition, Joseph Beuys transforms a simple domestic material into a work that bridges the realms of sculpture, body trace, and conceptual gesture. A hardened impression left by a fingernail in a block of butter-wax is presented in a plastic box mounted on gray cardboard, capturing a delicate but direct imprint of human contact.

By foregrounding the residue of a bodily action rather than a crafted form, the work reflects Beuys’s interest in process, imprint, and the ongoing dialogue between material and meaning. Butter—an organic substance laden with associations of nourishment, life, and transformation—becomes a site for subtle, quiet expression that resonates with his broader practice.

This work was published as a special edition of the first catalogue raisonné Joseph Beuys – Multiples + Prints.

Plastic envelope with margarine and white chocolate; envelope with Browncross stamp. 32 x 23 x 1 cm. Edition of 100, unsigned, numbered by the artist.
Schellmann 15

In aus Künstlerpost, Joseph Beuys turns the idea of mailed correspondence into a playful yet conceptually charged gesture. By sending “artist’s mail” made of ordinary, perishable materials, he disrupts conventional communication and redirects attention to the symbolic and sensorial qualities of the substances themselves. The work reflects Beuys’s broader interest in transformation, energy, and the poetic potential of everyday materials – an approach that shaped many of his early multiples and action-related objects.

This edition is part of the collections of The Broad, Los Angeles; the National Galleries of Scotland; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among others.

Felt, tape recording. 15 x 25 x 25 cm. Edition of 100, with 32 min. tape recording. With facsimile signature and numbering blind-stamped in reel; numbered. 
Schellmann 14 (Edition A)

This edition by Joseph Beuys is a sound installation consisting of a stack of 20 felt plates in which a tape is embedded. The recording documents a Fluxus performance from 1968 in which Beuys, together with Henning Christiansen and Johannes Stüttgen, rhythmically repeated the words "Ja" ("yes) and "Nee" (“no”) for almost an hour. The monotonous, mantra-like recitation creates a hypnotic effect that takes the listener out of the usual stream of thought. The felt panels reinforce this meditative effect by creating an atmosphere of rapture through their isolating and calm presence.

Two bronze works (oven and bathtub), immersion heater with lead. Bathtub: 32 x 14 x 10 cm (12 ⅝ x 5 ½ x 4 in); oven: 31 x 7 x 7.5 cm (12 ¼ x 2 ¾ x 3 in). Signed in brown oil paint "Braunkreuz" (on the base of the oven). 

Conceived in 1950 (oven) and 1961 (bathtub) and executed in 1984, Beuys cerated seven casts of this work (six exclusively for Schellmann and Klüser, and one as artist's cast).