Joseph Beuys - Art Market

Art Market

The first works Franz Joseph and Hans van der Grinten bought from Joseph Beuys in 1951 cost what would be equivalent today to €10 each. Beginning with small woodcuts, they purchased about 4,000 works and created what is now the largest Beuys collection in the world. In 1967, the ‘Beuys Block’, a group of first works, was purchased by the collector Karl Ströher in Darmstadt (now part of the Hessisches Landesmuseum).

Since his death, Beuys' artworks have fluctuated in price, some times not even selling. At auction, the top price paid for a Beuys work is $900,000 (hammer price) for a bronze sculpture titled Bett (Corsett, 1949/50) at Sotheby's New York in May, 2008. His Schlitten (Sled, 1969) sold for $314,500 at Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, in April, 2012. At the same auction, a Filzanzug (Felt Suit, 1970) sold for $96,100. This surpassed the previous auction record for a Filzanzug, 62,000 euros ($91,381.80 USD) at Kunsthaus Lempertz (Cologne, Germany) in November, 2007.

The artist produced slightly more than 600 original multiples in his lifetime. Large sets of multiples are in the collections of the Harvard University Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany. In 2006, the Broad Art Foundation in Los Angeles acquired 570 multiples by Beuys, including a Filzanzug and a Schlitten, thereby becoming the most complete collection of Beuys works in the United States and one of the largest collections of Beuys multiples in the world.