In 1972 Beuys was summarily dismissed from the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, where he had been a revered teacher. He then embarked on a series of public lectures, using blackboards to illustrate what he termed his "expanded concept of art," which incorporated science and economics and related social order to a living organism. This rare early example of Beuys's blackboards was created on April 20, 1973 during his presentation entitled 12 Hour Lecture - An Homage to Anachrsis (Anacharsis) Cloots" at Melville College in Edinburgh, Scotland. The complex drawing includes a number of Beuys's personal symbols - heart, stag, plants, sun, and the name of the eighteenth-century social theorist Anarcharsis Cloots.

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