Hundertwasser ,the man who wanted to change the world!

As a former teacher ,used to working with young children,I’ve always been sensitive to the world of colors!!One day ,a friend of mine asked me if I knew an Austrian painter named Hundertwasser and his beautiful paintings full of colors where the spiral was the starting point of most of his creations.

“Never heard of”was my first answer.But my curiosity had been stirred and I bought a book written by Harry Rand by Taschen editions and dicovered with delight the poetic worlds imagined by a man who transformed the reality as a magician!

The man was born in Vienna in 1928 and after the war left Austria for Paris to study art and architecture. In Paris he quickly developed a personal style and showed very early his interest for the lines. Thanks to colorful paintings he gave us a new vision of cities where colors raised horizontally with the buildings.

Half Sienne ,half Paris March 1950

St. Maurice/Seine, 1953. Mixed media: oil and casein on wood fibreboard

Hundertwasser had a real dislike for rationality and right angles . In the middle of the fifties he was very much inspired by persian miniatures and wood carvings by Hokusai ,Klee and Rousseau .

He was totally convinced that the straight lines were unhealthy and made the men sicks for the mere reasons that they don’t exist inside nature and that their artificial creations represented “a mortal threat”!

Inspired by Klimt and his spirals ,he recreated a universe full of little geometric elements that Klimt had used before him to adorn a background .

Little by little the painter will create universe all issued from his imagination were colors and forms mingle in a psychedelic way.

The man loves bright tones”malachite green, deep blue ,powerful yellow,, blood red.

La Picaudière, 1963. Mixed media: egg tempera and oil on canvas

The little art seeker loves the beautiful and childish paintings around the spirals and as a matter of fact the man will be for a long time the painter of spirals

But this is only a small aspect of his rich personality. As an early ecologist he will create during his lifetime his own pigments as did the masters of the Renaissance and as an art teacher in Vienna, he will form a generation of students to the power of imagination and fantasy in the processus of art creations.

But his manifesto for a new form of architecture will undoubtedly become real when he will be able as an architect to transform the conventional city of Vienna and other cities all around the world with his personal creations Suddenly in the way he realized his dreams in his paintings he managed to transform the linear world thanks to his innovative buildings.

A few of the architect’s realizations in Vienna and Germany

The man died in 2000 in New Zealand where he relies in the garden of the happy dead .

If you visit Vienna push the doors of his museum were many of his creations are displayed and discover a poetic place totally in harmony with his philosophy.

His work remains and the little art seeker recommends it to you if you want to see “la vie en rose!”