Joseph Beuys

German avant-garde artist (12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) who developed the concept of Social Sculpture, the idea that every human being is an artist and that society itself can be shaped as a work of art. Appointed professor of sculpture at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie in 1961, he was central to Fluxus from the mid-1960s. His signature materials, felt and fat, derived from a mythologised account of his rescue after a wartime plane crash. His 7000 Oaks project, begun at documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982, planted trees paired with basalt columns across the city as a living social artwork.