Joseph Heinrich Beuys was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and, with Heinrich Böll, Johannes Stüttgen, Caroline Tisdall, Robert McDowell, and Enrico Wolleb, created the Free International University for Creativity & Interdisciplinary Research (FIU). He previously in his talks and performances also formed The Party for Animals and The Organisation for Direct Democracy. He was a member of a Dadaist art movement Fluxus and singularly inspirational in developing of Performance Art, called Kunst Aktionen, alongside Wiener Aktionismus that Allan Kaprow and Carolee Schneemann termed Art Happenings. Today, internationally, the largest performance art group is BBeyond in Belfast, led by Alastair MacLennan who knew Beuys and like many adapts Beuys's ethos.

Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus is known for experimental contributions to different artistic media and disciplines and for generating new art forms. These art forms include intermedia, a term coined by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins; conceptual art, first developed by Henry Flynt, an artist contentiously associated with Fluxus; and video art, first pioneered by Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell. Dutch gallerist and art critic Harry Ruhé describes Fluxus as "the most radical and experimental art movement of the sixties".