AII - Artist - Hundertwasser, Friedrich

Brief Notes:
Decorative, expressionistic and autosymbolic,  Friedenreich Hundertwasser’s work, both graphic and architectural, mixes primitivism and fantasy with baroque complexity. Often it incorporates archaic and rigid forms. Born Friedrich Stowasser in Vienna, the artist lost his father at the age of one. In 1943 his mother lost 69 Jewish relations who were deported and killed. In 1953 he painted his first spiral and  he later called the straight line the tool. He once remarked “… the picture is the harvest of the dream.” In 1961 he had a highly successful retrospective at the Venice Biennial.  In 1968 he sailed from Sicily to Venice in an old wooden ship which he converted into the “Regentag.” After designing the Munich Olympia poster, he collaborated on the film Hundterwasser Regentag and then began the Regentag print portfolio. His world tour, Austria Presents Hundertwasser to the Continents, began at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris. In 1979 his Peace Flag for the Near East was sent to the heads of state in the Near East by the Chancellor of Austria. In 1980 Washington, D.C. proclaimed “Hundertwasser Day” and he spoke for ecology, against nuclear power, and for an architecture befitting man and nature at the U.S. Senate and in Washington D.C. museums. In 1982 he created the posters “Save the Whales,” and “Save the Seas” for Greenpeace and the Jacques Cousteau Society, as well as “You Are a Guest of Nature” for the Center for Environmental Education. In 1983 he created six postage stamps for the United Nations and laid the cornerstone of Hundterwasser House in Vienna.  He continued to make meaningful poster designs as well as architectural realizations and town plans worldwide. His Thermal Village at Blumau, Styria, is based on  his Hugelwiesenland model In the Rolling Hills.


Selected Bibliography
Bockelmann, Manfred (1972). Hundertwasser: Rainy Day, Greenwich, Connecticut, New York Graphic Society, Ltd.
Hoffmann, W. (1976). Hundertwasser. New York, Rizzoli International Publications.
Mathey, J.F. Hundertwasser. New York, Crown Publishers.
Restany, P. (1978). Happy Hundertwasser. New York; Ballantine Books.
Piece 1
Price Catagory