7296 - Beuys, Joseph

Beuys, Joseph Manifesto—European Parliament—Vote for the Greens 3 autograph sheets as a triptych: 2 sheets in brown pen on notepad paper and 1 sheet in pencil on notepad paper from the “Hotel Monaco & Gran Canal/Venice,” bearing Beuys’s main stamp and the sheet stamp for the European elections. 1979. 17 x 32 cm (triptych); 2 sheets of the triptych, each 17 x 10 cm, and 1 sheet 12 x 8 cm; 39 x 55.5 cm (backing cardboard). Each signed “Joseph Beuys.” The notepads assembled into a triptych are significant programmatic documents for Beuys’s political development: In 1979, Joseph Beuys ran as a candidate for the “Green Party” in the European Parliament election. Beuys was not only one of the party’s leading candidates but also designed its campaigns. In the appeal he drafted for this purpose, he wrote at the time: “I stand up for the Greens because it has become clear that everything we incorporate into our lives becomes meaningless when life itself is threatened. I work for the Greens because they are more than just the political parties’ guilty conscience, and I am running for them because only the Greens around the world want to use their creative powers to bring about a genuine transformation of our lives. That is why the vote you cast for the Greens is a vote you cast for yourself for a better world.” (Joseph Beuys—Election Appeal, in: Campaign newspaper of the Other Political Association (SPV) THE GREENS for the European Parliament election, Bonn/Düsseldorf 1979). The party, which had just been formed at the time, advocated for grassroots democracy, ecology, equality, and social justice. These pages contain numerous notes on several political issues, program points, and ideas important to Beuys, such as “Western socialization / democratization / Eastern liberalization > mixture,” as well as aphorisms that evidently arose during the creative process, such as “What constitutes true science and true art, and what constitutes false science and false art, is determined by the public prosecutor” or “Understanding art—creating art.” Beuys ended his political career in 1982 but remained a member of the Greens until his death. Provenance: Private collection, Austria - Please request condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog. - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog.