SENSE: Beuys / Gormley A conversation through drawing

Curated by Antony Gormley on the occasion of the exhibition Joseph Beuys: 40 Years of Drawing, this standalone presentation in the Chapel Gallery at Ely House places the artist's drawings in conversation with those by prominent post-war German artist Joseph Beuys.

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Beuys and I found in drawing a fertile ground, which runs parallel to those actions that we have found necessary to make on and with the world.

 

— Antony Gormley, 2022

 

Beuys's drawings have served as an enduring touchstone for Gormley. By interspersing works spanning several decades of each artist's respective career, Gormley illustrates the shared motifs and materials that connect their drawing practices. What emerges is a joint interest in reconceptualising the relationship of the human with the natural world and built environment.

 

Drawing is a form of physical thinking, both a mediumistic relationship with the material of its making and an alchemical mixture of deductive and intuitive reasoning. A day without drawing is a day lost. 

 

— Antony Gormley

Gormley takes particular inspiration from Beuys's Bewegung Rhythmus (Movement Rhythm) drawings, created in 1962. Referencing the internal bodily systems and recurring motif of the corner featured in these works, he writes, 'I think they talk very powerfully, very simply with the minimum of means, about our relationship with our bodies but also with the built world that our bodies live within.'

 

Joseph Beuys

Bewegung Rhythmus, 1962

Pencil on folded sheets of paper, part A

21.7 x 15.2 cm (8.54 x 5.98 in)

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Joseph Beuys Bewegung Rhythmus, 1962 Pencil on folded sheets of paper, part A 21.7 x 15.2 cm (8.54 x 5.98 in)

Joseph Beuys

Bewegung Rhythmus, 1962

Pencil on folded sheets of paper, part C

21.7 x 15.2 cm (8.54 x 5.98 in)

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Joseph Beuys Bewegung Rhythmus, 1962 Pencil on folded sheets of paper, part C 21.7 x 15.2 cm (8.54 x 5.98 in)

Belonging to Gormley's Zone series (2017-20), this drawing is made by incising lines into a sheet of paper soaked in a light carbon and casein wash. The scratches absorb the surrounding pigment at a faster rate, forming a halo around the lines and extending the corporeal borders of the body.

 

Antony Gormley

SET III, 2018

Carbon and casein on paper

38.3 x 28 cm (15.08 x 11.02 in)

 

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I think that the generosity of the drawings is that he wants them to be for us, what they were for him, and engendering a place where the familiar becomes strange or the strange becomes familiar. 

 

— Antony Gormley on Joseph Beuys

 

Beuys experienced the physical process of drawing as an essential means through which to crystallise his thoughts. In turn, Gormley describes 'the act of drawing as a form of tuning.' For him, as for Beuys, it is conceived as 'a necessary daily activity in which thought is made physical and grounded.'

Joseph Beuys

a she-leper (hare's blood), 1975

Pencil and watercolour on paper

22.8 x 32.8 cm (8.97 x 12.91 in) 

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Antony Gormley

20TH BLOOD FIELD I, 2021

Blood on paper

19 x 14 cm (7.48 x 5.51 in)

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Antony Gormley

LEARNING TO THINK X, 2021

Blood on paper

19.2 x 14.1 cm (7.55 x 5.55 in)

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View the online exhibition for Joseph Beuys: 40 Years of Drawings, a major presentation of 100 works from the collection of the Joseph Beuys family shown in the UK for the first time.

 

Explore the exhibition  

 

 

Learn more about Antony Gormley  

 

Learn more about Joseph Beuys  

 

 

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