| | “We are in need of magic" Hundertwasser believed. He believed that painting is a religious activity, that an artist must have the greatest intelligence and be stronger than the average person, and that he himself had a duty to ‘live an example to people, to paint for them a paradise.’ The artist, in Hundertwasser’s eyes, had to be ‘more intelligent, stronger…a giant in contrast to the other professions, which have failed completely.’ Famous for such militant statements - with schoolboy charm - Hundertwasser never relented.
Hundertwasser used colours instinctively and ignored the rules.
Steamships could sail through blue, brown, yellow or green water. The crucial thing for him was the overall effect created by the colours and the magic of creating a harmonious picture. His enthusiasm could not be confined to the page and spilled over on to over one hundred
whimsical buildings he designed. Hundertwasser’s architecture can
trace its roots to Gaudi and is linked to such contemporary architects
as Frank Gehry.
In 1959 Hundertwasser, Arnulf Rainer and Ernst Fuchs founded the
Pintorarium, an art academy whose aim was to overturn, improve and
renew what was left of the collapsed imperial-royal world. Yet
Hundertwasser’s fluidity, bold colours and flat style are undeniably
indebted to the Art Nouveau of his native Vienna and its
turn-of-the-century artists including Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.
Hundertwasser made only a small number of paintings and most are in
eminent private collections such as Thyssen Bornemisza at the Villa
Favorita in Lugano, Switzerland. He has had many solo exhibitions in
public museums including Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris,
Tokyo’s Seibu Museum of Modern Art, 31st Venice Biennal, Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, and the Barbican in London.
Robert Sandelson is presenting Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s first
large-scale exhibition in London since his retrospective at the
Barbican in 1983. Filling both floors of the gallery, the exhibition
will include two dozen major paintings, some of which have never been
on public display before, as well as drawings, wood cuts and
silkscreens.
Please contact Catharine Patha for more information on +44 (0)20 7 439 1001.
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