Joseph Beuys' Capri Battery stolen

Joseph Beuys

Capri Battery

Naples, Italy: Edizione Lucio Amelio, 1985

8 x 11 x 6 cm.

Edition of 200 [+ a few a.p] signed and numbered copies

On October 18th, the Joseph Beuys multiple Capri Battery - which is valued at between thirty and forty thousand dollars - was stolen from an exhibition in Oberhausen, Germany. The work was taken from the exhibition “Pollution. Body States. Fascism: Christoph Schlingenseif and the Art” at the Oberhausen Theater, where it was on loan from the LWL Museum for Art and Culture in Münster. The theft initially went unnoticed, but is now under investigation by German authorities. 

The German artist collective Frankfurter Hauptschule has announced that its members are responsible for stealing the work, and delivering it to the Iringa Boma regional museum and cultural centre in Tanzania as a “symbolic act of restitution to the former German colony.” 

A video titled “Bad Beuys Go Africa” was posted by the group to their Youtube page. The lighthearted clip (soundtracked with a choral cover of Toto's song "Africa") allegedly shows the trio in mid-heist, followed by the group celebrating aboard a plane en route to Tanzania. 

In a text accompanying the video, Frankfurter Hauptschule claims that the work is now on display “alongside traditional objects of the craftsmanship of the Hehe tribe.” The group further asserts, “Under the colonial regime, art objects, cultural assets and skulls of Hehe leaders were stolen from Iringa and brought to Germany in inextricable numbers.”

Beuys conceived of the work - one of his final multiples - on the island of Capri in Italy, while the artist was staying at the villa of his dealer Lucio Amelio. It consists of a yellow light bulb, a plug socket and lemon, housed in a wooden box with a signed certificate. On the side of the box, the following instructions are printed: ‘After 1000 hours, change the battery.’

The work exists in an edition of 200, with iterations residing in the collections of the MoMA, RISD Museum, Harvard Art Museum, The Walker Art Centre, The Tate, and the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, among other institutions.