Michael Werner Gallery presents Everyone is an Artist, an exhibition of major works by three titans of 20th-century art, Joseph Beuys (b. 1921 in Krefeld, Germany, d. 1986 in Düsseldorf), Marcel Broodthaers (b. 1924 in Brussels, d. 1976 in Cologne), and James Lee Byars (b. 1932 in Detroit, d. 1997 in Cairo).
Contemporaries and collaborators, Beuys, Broodthaers, and Byars adhered to a similar broad set of ideas: art cannot be separated from life, an object can create narrative, and art is activated by the imagination of the viewer. Everyone is an Artist charts and interweaves the oeuvres of these three highly influential artists as they reshaped how art was created and perceived in the 20th and 21st centuries.
“Everyone is an artist” is a direct quote from and a guiding principle of Beuys. Coming out of World War II, Beuys cultivated a body of work based on personal history, and potentially myth, about his Nazi plane crashing over the Crimean front in Ukraine and his rescue by a nomadic tribe of Tartars. Through the use of ‘actions’ and objects linked to his personal story, Beuys evoked collective memory and healing. Throughout his life, Beuys believed that art was not a career separate from society, instead creativity and the need to express it are essential to being human.
| Duration | 20 September 2024 - 09 November 2024 |
| Times | Tuesday through Saturday 10 am to 6 pm |
| Cost | Free |
| Venue | Michael Werner |
| Address | 22 Upper Brook Street, London, W1K 7PZ |
| Contact | 0207 495 6855 / london@michaelwerner.com / www.michaelwerner.com |