Kampa Museum's current exhibition of German artist Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) is essentially a good selection of multiples, graphics and art objects representing important episodes in the iconoclastic artist's life.

Unfortunately, taken out of the context of their original installations — and especially when placed under glass in gallery showcases — many of the pieces in this show simply cannot radiate the energy or emotion that their creator conveyed to the public when he was alive.

Beuys was raised as an only child in a middle-class Catholic family in northwest Germany, near the border with the Netherlands. In 1940, he joined the military and was trained as an aircraft radio operator and combat pilot. During World War II he flew for a Nazi bomber squadron, and was seriously wounded on several occasions.

One critical wartime experience (which may be apocryphal) influenced much of his art in later life. Reportedly, after his plane crashed in the Crimea, he was rescued by nomadic Tartars, who saved his life by rubbing him with fat and then wrapping him in felt to heal and warm his body.

It took Beuys many years to come to terms with his involvement in the war, and this figures in his work. He chose to study art instead of medicine after the war, graduating in 1952 from the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, where he studied sculpture and drawing. In 1961, at the age of 40, he became a professor of sculpture at his alma mater.

In the 1970s, Düsseldorf developed into a thriving center for contemporary art, led by Nam June Paik and the Fluxus group, which sought to erase traditional boundaries between literature, music, visual art, performance and everyday life. Beuys joined this movement, taking himself and his work in a new direction.

One of his best-known works is How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965), in which he walked around a gallery with his face smeared with honey and covered with gold leaf, explaining pictures to a dead hare that he was carrying. Outside the galleries, he once used the Berlin Wall in a performance piece, throwing a blood sausage over the wall (from West to East) to symbolically unify the divided Germanys.

Beuys thus made performance art designed to have an impact on wider society. His most important large-scale sculptures, small objects, drawings, room installations, actions and editioned objects and prints (usually used in his actions, and called multiples) were done from the 1960s until the end of his life.

By the late '60s, and especially throughout the '70s and '80s, Beuys was also actively involved in politics as a founding member of several activist groups: the German Student Party, the Organization for Direct Democracy Voted for by the People, and in 1979 the Green Party. Some objects and photos in this show represent these periods.

In We Will Not Do It Without The Rose (1972), there is a red rose in a long glass cylinder, beside which is a large photo of Beuys with his trademark hat, sitting at a table with a similar rose and cylinder, talking politics. This multiple object and photo represent Beuys' contribution to the Documenta 5 exhibit in Kassel, Germany, during which the office of the Organization for Direct Democracy was moved into the gallery so visitors and co-workers could discuss politics and artistic ideas.

In 1972, Beuys was dismissed from the faculty at the art academy for insisting that the school be open to anyone who wished to study. This turned out not to be a setback, since outside of the academy he continued his work with more freedom and vigor than ever.

In a 1973 photo in this show, Beuys, wearing a trench coat with a doctor's cross on his arm, walks by two rows of solemn German police. The artist is grinning, and two smiling hippies trail behind him. The contrast between rebels and state authority is underlined by Beuys' handwritten statement across the photo: "Democracy is merry."

In 1979, a large retrospective of Beuys' work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City marked a turning point for his artistic legacy, finally recognizing him as a significant postwar artist. Since then, he has been a major international influence on contemporary art, spurring a whole new generation of artists to freely combine found-object sculpture, installation and performance (with or without politics).