Joseph Beuys

About this book

"The Codices Madrid drawings come from a larger group that Beuys made during 1974 for a multiple, a facsimile sketchbook to be printed in a limited edition of one thousand copies. First broached in 1972 jointly by a German art dealer and a museum director, the project was conceived as a response to the recent rediscovery, in a library in Madrid where they had long been misfiled, of two "lost" notebooks by the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci. Beuys made numerous studies and sketches in anticipation of his book, which was to be closely modeled on Leonardo's in terms of its size. Its cover, however, significantly departed from that of its predecessor, for Beuys used a design replicating an American schoolbook. With the crop marks for publication readily visible on many sheets, these drawings offer a comprehensive recapitulation and re-examination of motifs, ideas, and concepts that had centrally informed his aesthetic and practice over the previous twenty-five years." -- Excerpt from Introduction on the Dia Center for the Arts website (see link). A group of drawings, part of the "raw material" for a multiple that the German artist Joseph Beuys had produced four years earlier, was purchased by Dia Center for the Arts in 1979. One of a number of major pieces in Dia's collection by this seminal postwar German artist, it forms the object of study and documentation in this publication. Also available in German.