SENSE: Beuys / Gormley A conversation through drawing

Presented concurrently with Joseph Beuys: 40 Years of Drawing, an exhibition of 100 works from the Joseph Beuys family dating from the 1940s to the 1980s, which are shown for the first time in the UK.

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

Curated by Antony Gormley, this exhibition in the Chapel Gallery at Thaddaeus Ropac London places the artist’s drawings in conversation with those by the prominent post-war artist, Joseph Beuys. Spanning three decades, from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, the selection of Beuys’s drawings illuminates the strong relationship that Gormley has developed with the German artist’s work. The presentation of Gormley’s own drawings, which date from 1984 to 2021, further highlights the two artists’ shared ground. What emerges is a joint interest in reconceptualising human relations with the natural world, social networks and the built environment.