HUNDERTWASSER - JU (HC)(GB)

Spiraling Ideas
Friedensreich hundertwasser, hero of fluid forms and ecology

Friedrich Stowasser, born in Vienna in 1928, called himself Friedensreich Hundertwasser Regentag Dunkelbunt. True to the variety of his names, his practice spanned innumerable forms?from painting and designing buildings to creating stamps and coins?and his titles were many: environmental activist, philosopher, individualist, architect, ecologist, and visual artist. He was, in his own words, “one who awakens identities.”

Across his work, Hundertwasser embraced the biomorphic, the irregular, and the irrational. Drawing inspiration from masters as varied as Gaudi and Gustav Klimt, his categorical rejection of the “godless and immoral” straight line, as well as his boycott of “monotonous architecture,” infused his bold, colorful works with a vitality that set him aside from most.