Growing up in a family of artists, Hundertwasser was no stranger in our house. Hundertwasser existed long before Pee-wee's Playhouse. One of Hundertwasser's saying, "The straight line leads to the downfall of humanity" that was often uttered in our art classes not only changed the way we thought about art, but moved its parameters for good.
The name Hundertwasser alone always seemed like a myth to me. Originally born as Friedrich Stowasser (Sto meaning hundred in Slavic, or hundert in German) in 1928 in Vienna, Hundertwasser spent his teenage years escaping Nazi prosecution. Assisted by the fact that his father was a catholic, Hundertwasser was able to keep up appearances, including his membership in the Hitler Youth, until the end of the war.
At the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Hundertwasser was an outsider. Although inspired by fellow Austrian painters Klimt and Schiele, Hundertwasser refused to use the straight line in any of his paintings, calling it downright "immoral." Even more telling was his use of colors. Combined with his refusal to adhere to the conventional, more "accepted" methods in painting, and it shouldn't surprise anyone how the Viennese art community would react to his new world of art. Hundertwasser's relationship with Vienna was a love-hate one, and he spent extended periods of time abroad in Italy, France, and New Zealand, among many other places.
Oddly enough, as mind-blowing as his paintings were, it would be his architecture that would cement his name in the art world for good. Again, one look at his buildings confirms what we had already known from his art. Circular windows, squarelike windows (minus the straight line, of course), sections of the house that change from blue to yellow to pink, staircases that looked like an earthquake had shaken them and had yet to be realigned, arches, round roofs, large poles...no two Hundertwasser houses look alike, yet they are more distinct than Coke cans and Pop Art.
Liebi, currently embroiled and dedicated to Islamic art, now is an admirer of Hundertwasser. At the Hundertwasser Haus in Vienna, we watch a 20 minute short of Hundertwasser, who describes his love for the water. Here's Hundertwasser on his boat, the Regentag. Hundertwasser, by his own admission, loved "Regentage," or rainy days, because those were the days he most preferred to work on.
Hundertwasser was an early advocate of environmentally friendly buildings. Here, he preferred projects where earth and building were one. One person's roof, for example, could be another person's bridge, stairway, or garden. Again, no rules if you're the creator. I even think of Hundertwasser whenever I see climbing walls with their seemingly random placement of pegs people have to grip on their way up.
In a city full of geniuses, it's not Mozart, Schubert, Freud, Klimt or Schiele I chose to write about, but Hundertwasser. The visit of the Hundertwasser Haus plus the museum were the highlights of this trip for us. Liebi and I remain inspired by his works. Liebi is thinking about making tiles featuring Islamic patterns...with a tinge of Hundertwasser to shake things up.
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