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Arquitecto Hundertwasser
Architect Hundertwasser
https://hugoklico.blogspot.com/2019/05/hundertwasser-constructor-de-espacios.html
Hundertwasser, constructor de espacios dispendadores de felicidad
It consists of 3 parts
1st part https://hugoklico.blogspot.com/2019/05/hundertwasser-constructor-de-espacios.html
2nd part https://hugoklico.blogspot.com/2019/05/hundertwasser-constructor-de-espacios_27.html
3rd part and final https://hugoklico.blogspot.com/2019/05/hundertwasser-constructor-de-espacios_28.html
Friedensreich Hundertwasser. 1st part
Builder of happiness-dispensing spaces.
In one of our breaks after the Frankfurt Book Fair, I went with my brother Guillermo to Vienna to see some of Hundertwasser’s works.
We walked and saw in great detail the «Hunderstwasserhaus», a wonderful complex of social housing that in 1977 the mayor Leopold Gratz offered to build.
We could see the use of vegetated roofs and that wonderful concept of “tenant trees” on the facades.
It still “hurts” me, not having been able to visit the waste treatment plant, just as I have the Waldspirale pending… (Residential complex in Darmstadt, Germany).
After seeing – thoroughly – the houses and having a coffee at the bar on the corner of the building, we went to a bookstore that was opposite, the owner told us that she had met Hundertwasser, who liked to talk and was very friendly, «he used to look at books and sometimes he would choose one that interested him and other times he would give him an order.»
He told us that he liked to talk to people and was very friendly.
It is interesting to know the customs or “normal” attitudes of those special and in certain exceptional cases characters. I imagined him, walking around in colorful clothes, greeting his neighbors, and doing his daily shopping.
Then we went to the Hundertwasser Museum (Kunst Haus Wien), which is just a few blocks from the Hundertwasserhaus along the Danube canal, called Vienna’s first “green museum.” At Untere Weißgerberstraße 13, (+43-1-712 04 91) info@kunsthauswien.com. Open every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
There Hundertwasser’s pictorial works coexist with temporary photography exhibitions.
Fiedensreich-Hundertwasser quotes:
”When you are dreaming alone, it is just a dream. When many dream together, it is the beginning of a new reality.» Friedensreich Hundertwasser
We could see the use of vegetated roofs and that wonderful concept of “tenant trees” on the facades.
«The straight line leads to the fall of humanity.»
«Art for art’s sake is an aberration, architecture for architecture’s sake is a crime.»
«Whoever lives in a house should have the right to look out of his window and design as he likes all the piece of exterior wall that he can reach with his arm, so it will be evident to everyone from a distance that a person lives there.»
«We suffocate in cities because of air pollution and lack of oxygen. The vegetation that allows us to live and breathe is being systematically destroyed. Our existence is losing dignity. We pass by gray and sterile facades, without realizing that we are condemned to live in prison cells».
(62 x 43 cm) Vienna 1948
«If we want to survive, we all have to act. Each of us must design our own environment. You cannot wait for the authorities to grant you permission. The exterior walls belong to you as much as your clothes and the interior of your house. Any personal design is better than sterile death».
«You have the right to design your windows and exterior walls to your liking as far as your arm can reach. Regulations that prohibit or restrict this right must be ignored. It is your duty to help vegetation achieve its rights with all the means at your disposal».
«Nature must grow freely where rain and snow fall, what is white in winter, must be green in summer. Everything that extends horizontally under the sky belongs to nature, trees should be planted on roads and roofs. We must ensure that the forest air can be breathed again in the city. The relationship between man and tree has to take on religious proportions. Thus, people will finally understand the phrase – the straight line is atheistic».
“The production of garbage should be a criminal offense. «The producers of waste, the packaging industries, those who cause waste, that is, all of us, should be severely punished in order to radically end the production of waste.»
He becomes a doctor, a specialist in the “redesign” of sick homes. “…I limit myself to giving the workers general instructions. No rules, squads, or water levels. They know that they can give free rein to their instincts and they know that I approve… All those who have worked for me have memories full of respect and nostalgia… Today the unions have replaced the brotherhoods. They only talk about salaries and working hours, but almost nothing about professional training. What I try to promote among my workers is the ability to innovate through the free exercise of their creativity. How could the ceramics on my walls and columns achieve such splendor and diversity, without the free initiative of my bricklayers and tilers?
His works were a manifesto against rational architecture, orthogonality and “inhuman” spaces; he rejected straight lines, using colors in organic forms. He thought that human misery was the result of an architecture that built monotonous, sterile and repetitive spaces. He understood individuality as a bet on life.
Harmony with nature, built manifestos
His work is an ideology and an ecological commitment, he was an active activist in respect for the laws of nature and the preservation of the natural habitat. He wrote articles and gave lectures in favor of the protection of nature, the rescue of the oceans, and the defense of whales and the rainforest.
His vision of the world centered on the letter “e” in “spiral”, he considered that each person, from their own “being”, surrounds themselves with layers “of meaning”, and they determine their relationship with the universe.
Their names
Huntderwasser will change names several times as a ritual. “…I have many names and I am many people…there are so many things to do that I would like to be ten Hundertwassers to do ten times as many things. Since that cannot be, at least I can have many names.”
Born Friedrich Stowasser
He blessed himself as Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser
He is known as Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Sto in Czech meaning hundred or Hundert in German. Hence, Stowasser or Hundertwasser. Friedensreich can be understood as “place of peace” or “Kingdom of peace.” Regentag which translates to “Rainy Day”. Dunkelbunt which translates to “Dark, multicolored.”
According to these explanations its name, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, means, «Kingdom of Peace with Hundreds of Waters.»
In some paintings his signature appears as 百水 (hyaku-sui), the Japanese translation of his surname.
Su vida
He was born in Vienna, Austria on December 15, 1928 and died in the United Kingdom on February 19, 2000 at the age of 71.
His mother was Jewish and his father (who died a few months after his birth) Protestant.
His childhood was spent in an environment of extreme poverty and under the suffocating climate of Nazism, which led his mother to decide to baptize him to save him and enlist him in the Hitler Youth.
At school (in his early stages of education – 1936 – he attended classes at the Montessori school in Vienna), he wore the obligatory yellow bracelet with the Jewish Star of David and at home the Nazi bracelet that he wore when at midnight they broke into his house for night inspection where they lived hidden in the basement until 1944. When the war ended he was in a serious state of malnutrition and was sent to the countryside to live, but The rest of his family was betrayed and murdered by the Nazis.
In 1948 he attended painting classes at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, which, which he abandoned after a few months because he found it boring, did not encourage him with its contents.
At that time he visited the exhibitions of Egon Schiele (1890-1918) at the Albertina and Walter Kaampmann (1887-1945), which influenced him significantly. Also admire Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), the engravings of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) and Japanese art, the colors of Paul Klee (1879-1940) and the landscapes and nature paintings of Henri Rousseau (1844-1910).
He would have liked to present himself as a painter (influential with his “shock in pictorial art”), sculptor, architect (he practiced brilliantly as such without an academic degree), urban planner, graphic designer of facades, flags, dresses, graphics and stamps.
As a theorist, he developed a philosophy of environmentalism.
Their works (in whole or in part) have been used to make flags, stamps, coins, posters, schools, churches, public toilets and have been used as a model in New Zealand in the design of buildings. In 1983 he drew a flag project for New Zealand (Koru). (1)
He was a nomad, he lived in Italy, and then together with three French friends – painters – he traveled to Sicily hitchhiking. He lived in Paris for 7 years in a family’s house. Then travel to Morocco, Tunisia, North Africa, Austria. These trips, which he made without money, were financed by creating works that he gave in exchange for accommodation.
In 1950 he moved to Paris to continue his studies, which he decided to abandon again to continue his journey around the world.
In 1952 he held his first individual exhibition at the Kunstverein in Vienna and 2 years later at the Studio Paul Facchetti in Paris.
It is its most famous flag. “The law of nature is the law of art, that of the random game of spontaneous creativity. The most spectacular details of the beauty of nature are presented to us completely free of charge. What are the beautiful drawings on the wings of butterflies or on the feathers of the peacock for?
“…Beauty is always functional. It is the basis of all technological achievements in ecology. The proof is the following: I am convinced that the wings of butterflies, widely spread in the sun, are energy collectors that act in the same way as photovoltaic panels for solar energy, and even more effectively, thanks to the beauty of the design adorned by the butterflies and which contrasts with the geometric rigor of the industrial collector panels.
He designed stamps for the Cape Verde Islands, as well as for the Geneva postal administration. His 1.20 Swiss franc stamp for the United Nations won in 1984 the prize for the most beautiful stamp and the gold medal of the Italian President Sandro Pertini.
“…The stamp must live its destiny… a true stamp must feel the sender’s tongue when he moistens the glue… the stamp must know the dark interior of the mailbox. The stamp must support postage. The seal must feel the hand of the postman when he delivers the letter to the recipient… The seal is only authentic when it has been sent on a letter, otherwise it has never traveled… This precious fragment of art reaches everyone as a gift that comes from afar. The seal must be a witness to the culture, the beauty and the creative genius of man.”
Its design, characteristics and influences
He created his own colors with materials he found: bricks, earth, charcoal…and applied them in very thin layers, in this way he intensified the color, achieving more depth.
He proposed a rejection of straight lines, which he came to call the «devil’s tool», he used bright colors, organic shapes, promoting a dialogue between human beings and nature, stimulating individualism.
“The blind, cowardly and stupid use of the straight geometric line has turned our cities into desolate wastelands from an aesthetic, spiritual and ecological point of view…the straight line and its derivatives are cancerous ulcers that poison urban planning and physical health alike…I refuse to build houses that can harm nature and people.”
“…I limit myself to giving the workers general instructions. No rules, squads, or water levels. They know that they can give free rein to their instincts and they know that I approve… Today the unions have replaced the brotherhoods. They only talk about salaries and working hours, but almost nothing about professional training. What I try to promote among my workers is the ability to innovate through the free exercise of their creativity. How could the ceramics on my walls and columns achieve such splendor and diversity, without the free initiative of my bricklayers and tilers?»
You can link it to “Biomorphism,” an artistic movement of the 20th century. This term (used for the first time in 1936 by Alfred Barr –1902-1981-), focuses on putting interest in natural life, using organic forms. (In an article in the Tate Modern he links artists such as Joan Miró (1893-1983), Jean Arp (1886-1966), Henry Moore (1898-1986), Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), Yves Tanguy (1900-1955) and Roberto to this movement. Matta (1911-2002).
Paint
He could paint anywhere, at home or at friends’, on the road, in a cafe, a restaurant, in nature, whether traveling by train or on planes. He did not have a studio, and the canvas was not necessarily spread on an easel, it could be on any surface.
When he was on the road, it could happen that he would fold the paper, painting only on the visible part of his work.
During his travels, he left his paintings unfinished to return to them when he returned.
Hundertwasser made his paintings in many ways, he painted with watercolors, oil, tempera, egg, gloss lacquers and used earth. He mixed different materials, displaying them side by side, so that they contrasted not only in their color but also in their texture. He made the «chassis» of his paintings himself, and he almost always stretched his own canvas, framing it.
He experimented with many techniques and invented new ones. He painted on different types of paper, preferring used wrapping papers, which he often mounted on various supports, such as wood fibreboard, hemp or linen.
He painted on found materials, for example on pieces of plywood, which he snapped together, as shown in the work 904 Pellestrina Wood, or on a switchboard, as in 816 Switch Board.
Almost invariably, Hundertwasser noted on the front or back of his paintings where and the date he painted them, as well as technical information about the work.
Book texts: Hundertwasser 1928-2000, Raisonné Catalog, Cologne, 2002. Volume 2:
“Color…a world of colors is always synonymous with paradise. A gray or monochromatic world is always synonymous with purgatory or hell.”
“…a good painting is full of magic. It makes you feel happy, it makes you laugh or cry, it gets things going. It must be like a flower, like a tree. It must be like nature. It is something that is missed, when it is not there.”
Wieland Schmied (1929-2014), Austrian art historian and critic, curator, literary scholar and writer, writes about Hundertwasser’s painting:
“…An important part of the effect of Hundertwasser’s painting is color, he uses colors instinctively, without associating them with a defined symbolism of his own invention. “He prefers intense, radiant colors and loves to place complementary colors next to each other to emphasize the double movement of the spiral, for example.”
The spiral is the symbol of life and death.
Spirals appear in his works from 1953, inspired by a documentary “Images of Madness” in which schizophrenic patients in a Paris hospital appear drawing and painting spirals. The “spiral house” appears, an ecological home that reduces pollution and appears repeatedly in his works.
This spiral is found at that point where inanimate matter transforms into life.
I am convinced that the act of creation took place in the form of a spiral. Our whole life proceeds in spirals.
Our earth describes a spiral course. We move in circles, but we never return to the same point. The circle is not closed. We just passed through the same neighborhood many times. It is characteristic of a spiral that appears to be a circle but is not closed.
The true spiral is not geometric but vegetative, it becomes thinner and thicker and flows around the obstacles that are in its path.
The spiral shows life and death in both directions. Starting from the center, the small infinity of the spiral signifies birth and growth, but as it grows larger and larger, the spiral dissolves into infinite space and disappears like waves disappearing into calm waters.
On the contrary, if the spiral condenses from outer space, life begins from the infinite to the great, the spiral becomes more and more powerful and concentrates on the infinitely small that man cannot measure because it is beyond his conception and which he calls death.
«La espiral crece y muere como una planta; las líneas de la espiral, como un río serpenteante, siguen las leyes del crecimiento de una planta. Sigue su propio curso. De esta manera la espiral no se equivoca».
Notes
1
The koru (in the Maori language, it is spoken in eastern Polynesia) is a spiral shape based on the appearance of a new frond of the unfolding silver fern, symbolizing new life, growth, strength and peace. Its shape “conveys the idea of perpetual motion,” while the internal coil “suggests returning to the point of origin.” Wikipedia.
continues in Part 2
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Arq. Hugo Alberto Kliczkowski Juritz
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