interviewed by Nicholas Zurbrugg, Eugene Carchesio and Graham Coulter-Smith
René Block, curator of the Sydney Biennale 1990, and the Joseph Beuys exhibition which recently toured Australia, speaks about his work as a gallery dealer working with Joseph Beuys and other artists associated with the Fluxus movement.
Nicholas Zurbrugg To begin with a very general question, when did you first meet Joseph Beuys? What was it that attracted you to his work?
René Block I met him for the first time in 1964. That was the time I decided to open a galley, and looked intensively around to put together a group of artists with whom I like to work. But I knew his work much earlier-many years earlier. In fact I first heard about him when I was sixteen years old, through an old painter in the city where Beuys grew up. I grew up not far from this place, and sometimes when I was at college I would meet this painter Hanns Lamers in the afternoons and he would show me drawings and small sculptures by Beuys. Lamers and Joseph were close friends in a father/son relationship and Lamers was the artistic centre in this small provincial town. My friendship with Lamers started in 1958 or 1959.
Eugene Carchesio At that time Beuys had never had an exhibition?
René Block Well, there was one exhibition in a stable at the van der Grinten brothers' farm-it was called a 'stable exhibition'. I did not see this exhibition, but when Beuys was appointed a professor at Dusseldorf Academy in 1961, the local museum in Kleve organised an exhibition of his work. It was the first exhibition that I saw of his drawings and small objects. That was very impressive to... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Left to right: René Block, Eugena Carchaslo, Nicholas Zurbrugg.
Joseph Bauys, Ausfagan (Sweeping Out), 1972. Performance Sculpture. Courtesy Rene Block.
