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Friedrich Stowasser was born in Vienna on the eve of the Great Depression. His father died when he was just a baby, possibly from appendicitis. Friedrich was raised by his Jewish mother who struggled to support them in those dark days of financial crisis. After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Friedrich’s mother enrolled him in the Hitler Youth hoping to hide her half Jewish son in plain sight. They both wore small swastikas to disguise being Jewish. SS soldiers came several times to the apartment Friedrich and his mother shared with his grandmother and aunt. When they did, he would put his Nazi regalia on and show them his father and uncle’s World War I medals. Over eighty of their family members died in concentration camps during the war, including Friedrich’s grandmother and aunt. He and his mother, along with another aunt and cousin, were the sole survivors of their once large family.
Friedrich began making art around age five. He briefly attended a Montessori school where he was praised for his paintings. However, he “couldn’t add up three and three by the end of a year.” A painting of a Madonna in a church convinced him he wanted to be a painter, so did the fact that the flowers he pressed in books faded: he wanted to paint flowers that would never fade. By fifteen he did his first drawings from nature, which would be a lifelong passion of his. He loved trees, plants, sky, and water. He loved dirt and often used natural minerals from bricks, clay, and limestone to make earth-colored pigment for his paintings. As a youth he painted conventional subject matter and was pleased when what he painted could be identified.
In 1948 he entered the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, but was quickly bored by the academic world and left after “learning the basics”— life drawing and drawing from nature. He was a good draftsman, but never relied heavily on it in his art. He loved bold and interesting color— this was the cornerstone of his work. Seeing the work of Egon Shiele had a huge impact on him. In fact, in some of his early drawings, it is clear he’s imitating Shiele’s style. He also admired Gustav Klimt, Paul Klee, primitive, medieval, Indian, Asian, and African art. He didn’t like Abstract Expressionism, though he admitted he had parroted the popular style for a short time in his youth. In 1949 Stowasser changed his name to Friedensreich Hundertwasser, which literal means “peace rich hundred water,” and apt name for a gentle nature-lover.
He began what would be a lifetime of traveling in 1949. He went to Italy and Paris, lived with friends, and rode a bike everywhere. Hitchhiking, he met three artists whom he became close to. One was René Brô, a French artist whose style clearly influenced Hundertwasser. Brô taught Hundertwasser how to live off of wheat bought directly from farmers, something the state frowned upon and tried to deter. It could be sprouted, roasted and when ground and soaked made into what was perhaps the world’s first veggie burger. Hundertwasser called the burgers “Brô’s pancake.” For three months he lived on ten kilos of wheat that he had bartered for with farm work. He liked being independent, not beholden to money and the need for it. He was free to paint what he liked and go where he wanted. He went to Morocco and Tunisia, seeing more of the non-European art that would be such an influence on him. During his travels he met and married Herta Leitner. One day Herta bought Hundertwasser a bag of onions thinking Jews ate onions like apples—this gaffe didn’t augur well for their future. The marriage dissolved after two years.
Hundertwasser always had a keen interest in architecture. He was particularly smitten with Shiele’s drawings of buildings. He didn’t like the inhuman, modern buildings of Mies van der Rohe and Buckminster Fuller; he wanted to see buildings that acknowledged human scale and nature. He didn’t have any training in architecture, but that didn’t stop him from drawing the buildings he dreamed of. Later, when he had more success as an artist, Hundertwasser’s designs would be translated into blueprints by architects. These designs included buildings with trees growing out of the sides and on the roofs. He imagined “green” buildings long before it was a trendy idea. He used bright colors and organic shapes—the straight line was his enemy, a dehumanizing element that went against nature. He felt buildings and cities should be integrated with nature, not separated from it. To this day, dozens of his charming, whimsical buildings dot Germany and Austria like enchanted dreams of a sophisticated child.
Much of Hundertwasser’s art is made up of spirals. He first touched upon this idea while watching a film about art made by schizophrenic patients. He saw life, death, and all creation in spirals. His art was unique, and this was possibly the reason he had such surprising success. He had lean years in his youth, but from a relatively young age he was able to sell art and make a good living. His work wasn’t always popular with critics, but the public liked it. He painted by starting with a basic sketch and would start on the outside edge filling in the space with color. Often the piece would change dramatically from what he first envisioned, but that didn’t bother him. He made thousands of paintings, often on any kind of paper and with any pigments that were on hand. He used wrapping paper, paper bags, fiberboard, casein, watercolor, chalk, egg tempera and fish glue. He even experimented with making his own pigments from crushed stones and brick. Like his early influence Klimt, he sometimes used gold leaf. Using the idea of layers, like the rings in a tree or strata of rock and earth, Hundertwasser built his paintings of people, landscapes, ships, seascapes and cityscapes like something from nature. His lack of training didn’t hinder him at all. In fact, the seeming lack of sophistication gives his work a deceptive innocence. The beauty strikes right to the core because there is no pretense.
Hundertwasser enjoyed and excelled at printmaking. He liked to be able to mass produce his art, though he also wanted each piece to be somehow unique. Sometimes he would put an initial layer of color down which would be slightly different for each print. He studied printmaking in Japan, learning the complex techniques that involved many master artisans. Hundertwasser had great ties with Japan, and while on a visit there met his future wife, Yuko Ikewada. They were only married a few years, but several Hundertwasser buildings still stand in Japan. Art endures, even if relationships don’t. Although Hundertwasser wasn’t able to maintain a marriage for very long, his relationship with René Brô lasted throughout their lifetimes. Hundertwasser unabashedly credited Brô with his birth as a painter. The two often spent time together painting in various countries, and Hundertwasser lamented the fact that Brô didn’t achieve the same kind of fame he did.
Hundertwasser wrote and talked a lot about his ideas and philosophies. He believed strongly in the positive effects of creativity and thought that a lot of the problems in the world came from a lack of creative thinking. He was distressed by man’s violence and destructive nature and was an outspoken proponent of conservationism, disarmament, and human welfare. By the time he was in his late thirties, he was a very successful artist. He became more and more interested in architecture and implementing his designs. He continued to travel extensively, visiting Siberia, Africa, Japan, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Tahiti, Sardinia, India and America. He bought a boat and called it Regentag—rainy day. He thought rainy days were the most beautiful because they made colors so vivid. He went on long sailing trips and lived on the boat while it was docked in harbors.
In 1973 he traveled to New Zealand and bought a farm. He planted 60,000 trees on the land and grass on the roofs of the buildings. He asked permission to eventually be buried in the garden under a tulip tree. He didn’t think people should be chemically preserved like ancient Egyptian kings. He thought they should be reabsorbed into the universe naturally, beautifully. He thought artists had a duty not just to reflect reality, but to dream, imagine, and create a better world, to “untangle the perversity.” Artists were dangerous, he said, as they didn’t fit into the system. They set an example of how others should live.
In 1979 he wrote, “I am looking forward to becoming humus myself. Buried naked without a coffin, under a tree, on my land in Ao Tea Roa.” He died of heart failure while at sea on the Queen Elizabeth II. He was buried on his farm as he had wished in the “Garden of the Happy Dead.”
©2016 Alice DuBois
For More Information See:
- http://www.hundertwasser.com/
- "Hundertwasser" By Werner Hofmann 1976
- "Hundertwasser" By Harry Rand 1993
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