Friedensreich Hundertwasser

(b Vienna, 15 Dec 1928). Austrian painter and printmaker. Born to a Jewish mother, he foiled the Nazis and was able to shield some of his relatives for a time. During Nazi rule he studied in Vienna, at public schools and at the Montessori school before briefly attending the Akademie der Bildenden K?nste. His floridly patterned works with their haunting and rich colours are dependent on the decorative tradition that produced Art Nouveau. The luxurious, sinuous forms and expressive distortions affiliate him to figurative artists such as Klimt and Schiele. Hundertwasser's subject-matter modified these stylistic sources and was often influenced by his great interest in a sane environment expressed as a stable relationship between man, the built world and nature. He travelled widely and developed a pictorial vocabulary unspecific to any place or time. Hundertwasser made significant contributions to printing techniques with such works as the woodcut series Nana Hiakv Mizu (1973; with Japanese artists). The decorative and technical opulence of his work made him a controversial figure with the critics, while assuring him a large popular following.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Austrian born visionary painter and spiritual ecologist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (Friedrich Stowasser; born 1928) consistently worked with spiral motifs, primitive forms, spectral colors, and repetitive patterns. Although influenced by other Viennese artists, Hundertwasser was never formally affiliated with any "ism."

Friedensreich Hundertwasser was born Friedrich Stowasser in Vienna on December 15, 1928, of a Jewish mother and a Christian father. His father died in 1929. Hundertwasser was baptized in 1937 and supposedly joined the Hitler Youth Corps in 1941. In 1943 69 of his maternal relatives were deported and killed in Nazi concentration camps. During the war and the Russian occupation Hundertwasser lived in a Viennese cellar with his mother. Decades after the Hitler period he could be seen carrying a satchel containing a passport, foreign currencies, and a portable painting set, among other essentials. Hundertwasser married in 1958, while in Gibraltar, and was subsequently divorced in 1960. In 1962, after spending a year in Japan, he married Juuko Ikewada in Venice. They were divorced four years later.

Hundertwasser is viewed as an international, independent artist. He traveled, lived, and worked in various locations throughout Europe, the East, North Africa, New Zealand, and Australia and was never formally affiliated with any school of painting or "ism." In 1949 he selected and assumed the name Hundertwasser (Hundred Water), and in 1969 Friedensreich (Kingdom of Peace), often adding Regenstag (Rainy Day), a name that he originally invented for the converted sailing ship upon which he sometimes lived.

From 1936 to 1937 Hundertwasser attended Montessori School in Vienna, a learning experience to which he would later credit the choice of color in his paintings. His formal art training included three months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1948 and a day at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1950. As a mature artist he professed an intense dislike for all art theory, including color theory. Hundertwasser believed that painting is a religious experience. Opting always for spiritualism over rationalism, he preferred to be viewed as a "magician of vegetation." In 1954 the artist developed a quasi-mystical philosophy of artistic creation and perception called "Transautomatism" which he later developed into a "Grammar of Vision."

Hundertwasser's early paintings were heavily influenced by the Vienna Secession tradition of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. His works from 1949 through 1953 also display close affinity with well-known paintings by Paul Klee. In 1953 the spiral motif first appeared in his work and became the most consistent formal element of his mature style. The artist, who first recognized the spiral while viewing a film called "Imagery of the Insane," defined the motif as a "biological spiral" and "a symbol of life." Throughout his career Hundertwasser used the six spectral colors almost exclusively. His later work combined these with metallic colors such as gold, silver, bronze, or aluminum. His forms are archaic and primitive and his picture surfaces are often covered by repetitive patterns.

It was the artist's intention to offer his viewers a glimpse of Paradise, constructed while the creator is in a dream state. The work is rarely disturbing and almost always highly decorative. Hundertwasser made no attempt to identify universals with his primitivized forms, and as a result his language remains relatively private. The audience is given only limited access to the painter's fantasy experiences. Hundertwasser's dreams were more than a little repetitive, but usually pleasant.

Numerous exhibitions of Hundertwasser's paintings have been mounted, including one-man shows at the Art Club, Vienna (1952); Studio Paul Facchetti, Paris (1954, 1960, 1965, and 1974); Tokyo Gallery (1961); Austrian Pavilion, Binnale, Venice (1962); Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover (1966); University of California, Berkeley (1968); Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand (1973); and a retrospective at the Haus der Kunst, Munich (1975). In 1957 Hundertwasser was awarded the Prix du Syndicat d'Initiative, Première Bordeaux (France) Biennale, and in 1959 the Sanbra Prize at the Fifth São Paulo (Brazil) Biennale. That same year he assumed a guest lectureship in Hamburg at the Kunsthochschule der Freien und Hansestadt, only to be asked to leave his post because he performed the "endless line," a ten mile, two days and nights spiral. He was also awarded the Mainichi Prize at the Sixth International Art Exhibition, Tokyo, in 1961.

The artist's public lectures and manifestations include: "Art Is Always Changing" (Salzburg, 1949); "My Aspiration: To Free Myself from the Universal Bluff of our Civilization" (Vienna, 1952); "Mouldiness Manifesto: Against Rationalism in Architecture" (Austria and Germany, 1958); "Les Ortilles" (Paris, 1959); "Naked Speech" (Munich, 1968); "Intensive Naked Demonstration" (Vienna, 1968); and "Your right to windows - your duty to the trees" (1972).

A diverse artist, Hundertwasser also designed a church in 1987 and a day-care center in Frankfurt, Germany (1987). He created postage stamp designs for Austria, Senegal, and the Cape Verde Islands. He also designed relief medallions for the Austrian Mint, environmental posters donated to various environmental groups, and various architectural models.

Hundertwasser received the Austrian State Award for Arts in 1980 and the Austrian Protection of Nature Award in 1981. He resided in Vienna.

Further Reading

Friedrich Hundertwasser, by Herschel B. Chipp and Brenda Richardson, published in conjunction with the University of California, Berkeley's 1968 Hundertwasser exhibition, is of particular value to the English speaking audience. The catalogue includes an informed introductory essay, the artist's "Mouldiness Manifesto," commentaries by graduate students who participated in a Hundertwasser seminar, and a personal reminiscence by collector Joachim Hean Aberbach. Hundertwasser, a small scale but well-executed catalogue published by Aberbach Fine Art, New York (1973), is another good source, as is Hundertwasser Rainy Day, by Manfred Bockelmann (1972).

Austrian artist and architect, born Friedrich Stowasser, he abhorred straight lines and the rigidity of Modernism (1). His Hundertwasserhaus, at the junction of Kegelgasse and Löwengasse, Vienna (1977–86), with its irregular fenestration, bands of colour, onion-domes, and plantation of trees on the roof, made his reputation as a designer of extraordinary inventiveness. In the 1990s he brought the same verve and imagination to a motorway service station at Bad Fischau (1989–90) and a new district heating plant in Vienna (1988–92). Other projects include the Rueff factory, Muntlix, Vorarlberg (1982–8), the renovation of the Church of St Barbara, Bärnbach, Styria (1984–8), the Kunst Haus, Vienna (1989–91), the Village near the Hundertwasserhaus, Vienna (1990–1), the Wiese housing development, Bad Soden am Taunus (1990–3), and a housing development at Plockingen-am-Neckar (1990–4). He believed that architecture should be more human and in harmony with nature, and that architects would have to follow the painters as they were no longer capable of creating beautiful buildings, having swallowed the tenets of Modernism to the exclusion of all else.

Bibliography

• Hundertwasser (1997)
• Taschen (ed.) (1997)
• personal knowledge

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

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Friedensreich Hundertwasser
Hundertwasser in New Zealand in 1998
Birth name	Friedrich Stowasser
Born	December 15, 1928(1928-12-15) Vienna, Austria
Died	February 19, 2000 (aged 71) aboard the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2
Nationality	Austrian
Field	Art, architecture

Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (December 15, 1928  – February 19, 2000) was an Austrian painter and architect. Born Friedrich Stowasser in Vienna, he became one of the best-known contemporary Austrian artists, although controversial, by the end of the 20th century.

Contents 1 Life 2 Artistic style and themes 3 Architecture 3.1 Buildings 3.2 Images 4 Influence 5 See Also 6 References and sources 7 External links

Life

Hundertwasser's father Ernst Stowasser died three months after his son's first birthday. The Second World War was a hard time for Hundertwasser and his mother Elsa, as she was Jewish. They avoided persecution by posing as Catholics, a credible ruse because Hundertwasser's father had been a Catholic. To remain inconspicuous, Hundertwasser joined the Hitler Youth.^[1]

Hundertwasser developed artistic skills very early. After the war, he spent three months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. At this time he began to sign his art as Hundertwasser instead of Stowasser. He left to travel, using a small set of paints he carried at all times to sketch anything that caught his eye. He had his first commercial painting success in 1952-3 with an exhibition in Vienna.

His adopted surname is based on the translation of Sto (the Slavic word for "one hundred") into German. The name Friedensreich has a double meaning as "Peaceland" or "Peacerich" (in the sense of "peaceful"). The other names he chose for himself, Regentag and Dunkelbunt, translate to "Rainy day" and "Darkly multicoloured". His name Friedensreich Hundertwasser means, "Peace-Kingdom Hundred-Water".

Hundertwasser (left) 1965 in Hannover

Hundertwasser married Herta Leitner in 1958 but they divorced two years later. He married again in 1962 but was divorced by 1966.

He moved into architecture from the early 1950s. Hundertwasser also worked in the field of applied art, creating flags, stamps, coins, and posters. His most famous flag is the Koru Flag. As well as postage stamps for the Austrian Post Office, he also designed stamps for the Cape Verde islands and for the United Nations postal administration in Geneva on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Hundertwasser considered New Zealand as his official home, and no matter where he went in the world, his watch was always set to New Zealand time. He was buried there after his death at sea on the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 in 2000, at the age of 71.^[1]

Artistic style and themes

Hundertwasser's original and unruly artistic vision expressed itself in pictorial art, environmentalism, philosophy, and design of facades, postage stamps, flags, and clothing (among other areas). The common themes in his work utilised bright colours, organic forms, a reconciliation of humans with nature, and a strong individualism, rejecting straight lines.

He remains sui generis, although his architectural work is comparable to Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) in its use of biomorphic forms and the use of tile. He was also inspired by the art of the Vienna Secession, and by the Austrian painters Egon Schiele (1890–1918) and Gustav Klimt (1862-1918).

He was fascinated with spirals, and called straight lines "the devil's tools". He called his theory of art "transautomatism", based on Surrealist automatism, but focusing on the experience of the viewer, rather than the artist.

Architecture

A typical Hundertwasser facade: the Hundertwasserhaus in Plochingen

Although Hundertwasser first achieved notoriety for his boldly-coloured paintings, he is more widely known for his individual architectural designs. These designs use irregular forms, and incorporate natural features of the landscape. The Hundertwasserhaus apartment block in Vienna has undulating floors ("an uneven floor is a melody to the feet"), a roof covered with earth and grass, and large trees growing from inside the rooms, with limbs extending from windows. He took no payment for the design of Hundertwasserhaus, declaring that the investment was worth it to "prevent something ugly from going up in its place".

From the early 1950s he increasingly focused on architecture. This began with manifestos, essays and demonstrations. For example, he read out his "Mouldiness Manifesto against Rationalism in Architecture" in 1958 on the occasion of an art and architectural event held at the Seckau Monastery. In Munich in 1967 he gave a lecture called "Speech in Nude for the Right to a Third Skin". His lecture "Loose from Loos, A Law Permitting Individual Buildings Alterations or Architecture-Boycott Manifesto", was given at the Concordia Press Club in Vienna in 1968.

In the Mouldiness Manifesto he first claimed the "Window Right": "A person in a rented apartment must be able to lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach. And he must be allowed to take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach. So that it will be visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardised man who lives next door." In his nude speeches of 1967 and 1968 Hundertwasser condemned the enslavement of humans by the sterile grid system of conventional architecture and by the output of mechanised industrial production.^[2] He rejected rationalism, the straight line and functional architecture.^[3]

For Hundertwasser, human misery was a result of the rational, sterile, monotonous architecture, built following the tradition of the Austrian architect Adolf Loos ("Ornament and Crime"). He called for a boycott of this type of architecture, and demanded instead creative freedom of building, and the right to create individual structures.^[4] In 1972 he published the manifesto Your window right — your tree duty. Planting trees in an urban environment was to become obligatory: "If man walks in nature's midst, then he is nature's guest and must learn to behave as a well-brought-up guest."

In the 1970s, Hundertwasser had his first architectural models built. The models for the Eurovision TV-show "Wünsch Dir was" (Make a Wish) in 1972 exemplified his ideas on forested roofs, tree tenants and the window right. In these and similar models he developed new architectural shapes, such as the spiral house, the eye-slit house, the terrace house and the high-rise meadow house. In 1974, Peter Manhardt made models for him of the pit house, the grass roof house and the green service station – along with his idea of the invisible, inaudible Green Motorway.

In the early 1980s Hundertwasser remodelled the Rosenthal Factory in Selb, and the Mierka Grain Silo in Krems. These projects gave him the opportunity to act as what he called an "architecture doctor".

In architectural projects that followed he implemented window right and tree tenants, uneven floors, woods on the roof, and spontaneous vegetation. Works of this period include: housing complexes in Germany; a church in Bärnbach, Austria; a district heating plant in Vienna; an incineration plant and sludge centre in Osaka, Japan; a railway station in Uelzen; a winery in Napa Valley; and a public toilet in Kawakawa.

In 1999 Hundertwasser started his last project named Die Grüne Zitadelle von Magdeburg. Although he never finished this work completely, the building was built a few years later in Magdeburg, a town in central Germany, and opened on October 3, 2005.

In his architectural oeuvre, Hundertwasser put diversity before monotony, and replaced a grid system with an organic approach that enables unregulated irregularities.

Buildings

Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna

• Hundertwasser House, Vienna, Austria
• District Heating Plant, Spittelau, Vienna, Austria
• Hundertwasserhaus Waldspirale, Darmstadt, Germany
• KunstHausWien, Vienna, Austria
• Kindergarten Heddernheim, Frankfurt
• Motorway Restaurant, Bad Fischau-Brunn, Austria
• Hot Springs Village, Bad Blumau, Styria, Austria
• Hundertwasserkirche, Baernbach, Styria, Austria
• Markthalle, Altenrhein, Switzerland
• Wohnen unterm Regenturm, Plochingen, Germany
• Quixote Winery, Napa Valley, (USA), 1988-1998^[5] (his only building in the US)
• Maishima Incineration Plant, Osaka (Japan), 1997-2000
• Public toilets, Kawakawa (New Zealand), 1999^[6]
• Hundertwasser "environmental railway station", Uelzen (Germany), 1999-2001
• Die Grüne Zitadelle von Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany, 2003-2005
• Ronald McDonald Kinder Vallei, Valkenburg aan de Geul, The Netherlands

An art gallery featuring Hundertwasser's work will be established in a council building in Whangarei, New Zealand, and will bring to fruition his 1993 plans for improving the building.^[7]

Images

Kunsthaus in Vienna	Grüne Zitadelle in Magdeburg, Germany	Quixote Winery in Napa Valley	Hundertwasser facade in Plochingen
House Waldspirale in Darmstadt	Thermal power plant in Vienna	Residential building at Bad Soden am Taunus (suburban Frankfurt, Germany)	Roof garden of a Kindergarten in Frankfurt-Heddernheim

Hot springs, Bad Blumau (Austria)

Influence

In New Zealand his design beliefs have been adopted by a New Zealand terracotta tile manufacturer, who promote his style as "Organic Tiling".^[8] The tiling is designed by Chris Southern, who worked with Hundertwasser on the Kawakawa toilets.

See Also

• Roof garden
• Green Roof
• Urban Agriculture
• Skyrise greenery
• Cool Roof
• Green Wall

References and sources

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Pawley, Martin. Friedensreich Hundertwasser - Maverick architect building against the grain (obituary), The Guardian, 14 April 2000. Retrieved 1 June 2009.
2. ^ Catalogue Raisonné, p. 1177
3. ^ Wieland Schmied (ed.), Hundertwasser 1928-2000, Catalogue Raisonné, Cologne: Taschen, 2000/2002, Vol. II, pp. 1167-1172.
4. ^ Cat. Rais. p. 1178
5. ^ Hundertwasser design, Quixote Winery. Retrieved 3 June 2008.
6. ^ Hundertwasser toilets, Far North District Council. Updated 9 December 2008. Retrieved 3 June 2008.
7. ^ Tony Gee, New gallery to show artist's work, New Zealand Herald, 25 February 2008.
8. ^ Middle Earth Tiles, Organic Tiling

Sources

• Hundertwasser (Interview by Harry Rand) ISBN 3-8228-3416-9

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Friedensreich Hundertwasser

• The Mosaics of Hundertwasser
• Hundertwasserhaus website
• "Die Grüne Zitadelle von Magdeburg" - The last project of Hundertwasser

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