Schillerplatz 3, 1010 Wien, Austria
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
14 Rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris, France
Ecole des Beaux-Arts
Schillerplatz 3, 1010 Wien, Austria
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
14 Rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris, France
Ecole des Beaux-Arts
Friedensreich Hundertwasser was born on December 15, 1928 in Vienna, Austria. He was a son of Ernst Stowasser and Elsa (Scheuer) Stowasser. His father died in 1929. In 1943, many 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.
During the period from 1936 to 1937, Hundertwasser attended Montessori School in Vienna. 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.
Hundertwasser's early paintings were heavily influenced by the Vienna Secession tradition of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. His works of the period 1949-1953 display close affinity with Paul Klee's well-known paintings. In 1953, the spiral motif first appeared in his work and became the most consistent formal element of his mature style. He defined the motif as a "biological spiral" and "a symbol of life". In 1954, Friedensreich Hundertwasser developed a quasi-mystical philosophy of artistic creation and perception, called "Transautomatism", which he later developed into a "Grammar of Vision".
During the 1960's, Friedensreich Hundertwasser was extremely successful, with a 1962 retrospective in the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale and a 1964 retrospective, mounted by the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover.
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.
In the early 1980s, he became an "architect doctor", remodeling a factory and grain silo. He implemented growing vegetation on rooftops and uneven floors. In 1981, Hundertwasser was appointed a head of the master classes for painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In 1983, he designed the Koru Flag for New Zealand.
In 1985, he completed Hundertwasser House, on which he collaborated with Joseph Krawina. In 1987, Hundertwasser designed a church and a day-care center in Frankfurt, Germany. He created postage stamp designs for Austria, Senegal and the Cape Verde Islands. He also designed relief medallions for the Austrian Mint, environmental posters and various architectural models. One year before his death, Hundertwasser was working on a catalogue raisonné of his works and presented the Uelzen Station architectural project.
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) and others.
Friedensreich's famous projects and works include Hundertwasser House in Vienna, Kawakawa Hundertwasser Toilet Block, Waldspirale residential building complex in Darmstadt, Germany and others. During his lifetime, the architect got numerous awards, including Order of Arts and Letters (1985), Order of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria (1997) and others.
Many of his works are held in the collections of different museums and institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and others.
825 The Trees Are the Flowers of the Good
211 Moroccan Jewess
221 Arabian Woman
844 A Tennos Fly With Hats
557 Houses in the Snow in a Silver Shower
563 A Spectacles in the Small Face
567 Three-Eyed Green Buddha with Hat
150 Singing Steamer in Ultramarine III
699 A The Houses Are Hanging Underneath the Meadows
532 The Lion of Venice
421 The Tower of Babel Pierces the Sun
531 Jew's House in Austria
368 A Eyebalance number five
851 A The Right to Dream
691 A Irinaland Over the Balkans
928 Antipode King
626 The Way to You
696 A Yellow Last Wil
630 A It Hurts to Wait With Love if Love Is Somewhere Else
701 A Crusade of the Crossroaders
637 A Waiting Houses
653 The Boy with the Green Hair
498 The Beard Is the Grass of the Bald-Headed Man
660 Shadow of the Stars
686 Good Morning City
656 The Expulsion
728 Meadowman
680 A Sad Not so Sad Is Rainshine - From Rainday on a Rainy Day
781 Green Town
676 A Rainy Day on the Regentag
540 House and Spiral in the Rain
849 A Homo Humus Humanitas
700 Olympic Games Munich 1972
816 Switch Board
994 The Four Antipodes
484 A Houses in Rain of Blood
487 A Little Palace of Illness
978 Rebellion of the Grid
847 A Peace Treaty With Nature
650 A Exodus Into Space
684 A Rainy Day with Walter Kampmann
433 The I Still Do Not Know
675 Kingdom of the Toro
551 A Spiralsun and Moonhouse – The Neighbours
687 A Columbus Rainy Day in India
944 Blue Blues
603 A Sunset
224 The Big Way
460 Hommage au Tachisme
906 Domestic Cat – The Cat of Atlantis
846 A Window Right
775 Park
738 Grass For Those Who Cry
652 Jorney II and travel by rail
692 The Rain Falls Far From Us Falls the Rain
936 The 30 Days Fax Painting
748 One of Five Seamen
553 A Street for Survivors
104 Cathedral I
818 Let Us Pray Manitou Wins
755 A Island of Lost Desire
745 Blobs Grow in Beloved Gardens
690 Green Power
398 The Mosque
839 The Third Skin
607 Girl-Finding in the Grass
850 A The Second Skin
762 Hide Under the Meadow It Begins to Rain
470 A Relations of a Spider
992 City View
475 A Rain of Blood Is Falling Into the Garden
227 A Raindrop Which Falls into the City
155 Three High Houses
697 A Regentag on Waves of Love
622 Mourning Schiele
848 A Right to Create
970 Who Has Eaten All My Windows
715 Homage to Schröder-Sonnenstern
583 Two Envelopes on a Long Voyage
808 End of the Waters
814 Pavilions and Bungalows for Natives and Foreigners
826 Nostalgic Roof
Hundertwasser believed, that painting is a religious experience. Opting always for spiritualism over rationalism, he preferred to be viewed as a "magician of vegetation".
Quotations:
"When we dream alone it is only a dream, but when many dream together it is the beginning of a new reality."
"Everyone should be able to build, and as long as this freedom to build does not exist, the present-day planned architecture can not be considered art at all."
"The straight line leads to the downfall of humanity."
"Just carrying a ruler with you in your pocket should be forbidden, at least on a moral basis. The ruler is the symbol of the new illiteracy. The ruler is the symptom of the new disease, disintegration of our civilisation."
"Visual pollution is more poisonous than any other pollution because it kills the soul."
"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."
Friedensreich was an outspoken activist against nuclear technology and pollution.
Friedensreich Hundertwasser married Herta Leitner in 1958. Two years later, in 1960, the couple divorced. In 1962, Yuko Ikewada became his second wife. But this marriage also didn't last long — the couple divorced in 1966. In 1982, Hundertwasser's only child, his daughter Heidi Trimmel, was born.
