Memory and social sculpture in the urban heart
Text and drawings by Gianluca Costantini
I have been to Düsseldorf many times, a city deeply connected to the life and work of Joseph Beuys. It is where he lived, worked, and taught, and traces of his presence can still be found throughout the urban landscape. Each time I return to Düsseldorf, I feel as though I am moving through a geography that continues to hold the memory of his thinking and practice.
Only by chance did I learn of the existence of an oak tree connected to 7000 Oaks, the project Beuys realized for Documenta in Kassel. It was a marginal detail, almost hidden, yet it opened a direct connection to one of the most radical works of twentieth-century art. I had already written about this project in the book Zodiac, which I made together with Ai Weiwei, but discovering that one of the oaks was located in Düsseldorf gave the work a new sense of proximity, almost a personal one.
Within the city’s urban fabric, a single oak tree grows in connection with 7000 Oaks. It is discreet, easily overlooked, and precisely for this reason charged with meaning. Its presence links Düsseldorf to the vast environmental and social art intervention initiated by Beuys in the early 1980s, extending the project beyond Kassel.
7000 Oaks – City Forestation Instead of City Administration was presented at Documenta 7 in 1982 and called for the planting of seven thousand oak trees, each paired with a basalt stele. Over the course of five years, the work gradually transformed the city and involved citizens and institutions in a collective process. For Beuys, this was not a decorative gesture but a political and cultural act, a concrete expression of what he described as “social sculpture.”
The oak tree in Düsseldorf was planted on November 23, 1983, in the presence of the artist, near Horionplatz and close to the Rheinknie Bridge. It is accompanied by a basalt stele originating from the original Kassel project. Although it does not belong to the systematic planting of the seven thousand oaks, the tree is recognized as a symbolic extension of the work—an echo of the project in the city where Beuys lived and taught.
Today, the oak grows in a limited urban space and is often overlooked. Yet it continues, quietly, to embody Beuys’s central idea: art as a living process, capable of acting over time and reshaping the relationship between individuals, communities, and the environment. When I think of this tree, it appears to me as a discreet but persistent presence—a silent reminder of our collective responsibility toward public space and the future.
This article is part of the research I am carrying out for the creation of a graphic novel dedicated to the life of Joseph Beuys. The articles recount some stages of the journeys I undertook in order to document my work.
Read also:
- The Bishop’s Door: Beuys, Mataré, and the Echo of History, A story of mentorship, postwar reconstruction, and the symbolic power of a mirror. Link
