'The spiral, as I see it, is a vegetative spiral, with swellings, where the lines become thicker and thinner, like the rings of a tree trunk…'
—Friedensreich HundertwasserOrganic forms and psychedelic colours dominate the mind when visualising the work of Austrian painter, architect, activist, and philosopher Freidensreich Hundertwasser. The artist’s work is as eccentric as his character, and mirrors his ideologies, reinterpreting the beauty of our surroundings and harmonising the divisions between man and nature.Overcoming the trauma of the Second World War, when he and his parents posed as Christians to avoid Jewish persecution, Hundertwasser found sanctuary in the natural world. After studying at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna and while travelling across Europe and Africa, the environment became his ultimate muse. As his artistic identity slowly developed, he began to reject the straight line, and so the spiral became his signature motif. Inspired by fellow Viennese artists Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, and Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí, Hundertwasser embraced decorative labyrinths of pattern to create his unique visual lexicon.
Although most well-known for his architectural masterpieces, such as the Hundertwasserhaus and Kunst Haus Wien in Vienna, Hundertwasser mastered and innovated many graphic techniques, including lithography, screenprint, etching and woodcut. Seeking the unique in all his works, he focused on smaller graphic editions, composed of several colour versions and variants, shying away from the machine-made seriality of his Western contemporaries. Like Klimt’s The Stoclet Frieze (1905-09), Hundertwasser glorified individual works with delicate additions of gold and silver foil, embedding every workable inch of an image with shape and colour. The result was an exuberant symbiosis of the real and the imagined. Less was not more.
Gustav Klimt, The Stoclet Frieze (detail), 1905-09. Image: Bridgeman Images In Nana Hyaku Mizu (1966-72) and Look at it on a Rainy Day (Regentag Portfolio) (1970-72) Hundertwasser presents variations of surreal morphing landscapes, some urban and some rural, that pulsate with vibrancy and energy. Buildings defy logic, their curved lines transforming man-made structures into organic objects swaying in the wind. In contrast the artist’s vegetative growth appears more static, reflecting a permanence to their place in the world. Spontaneity pervades and the viewer is confronted with a dream-like environment, not dissimilar to what they might know to be real, but enhanced, abstracted, and bursting with intricacy. Where does the man-made end and natural world start? For Hundertwasser, the goal was to obscure this barrier and bring attention to the irregularity of modern life. Which would you choose, reality or Hundertwasser’s trip into the surreal?
文學
Walter Koschatzky 44-53
Catalogue Essay
Including Eye Balance Number Five; Street For Survivors; It Hurts To Wait With Love If Love Is Somewhere Else; Exodus Into Space; A Rainy Day On The Regemtag; Columbus' Rainy Day In India; Irinaland Over The Balkans; Regentag On Ways Of Love; The Houses Are Hanging Underneath The Meadows; and Crusade Of The Crossroaders
重要歐洲收藏
105
《雨天中看它（下雨天作品集） (K. 44-53)》
1970-72年作
全組十幅彩色絲網印刷 壓花 亮光漆 發光粉塵 多種紙本 （全包邊）
附散頁、原裝木箱
全部圖像：約 39 x 59 公分 (15 3/8 x 23 1/4 英吋)
全部紙本：約 49.3 x 67.2 公分 (19 3/8 x 26 1/2 英吋)，一個垂直量度
文件夾：54.8 x 72.5 x 4.5 公分 (21 5/8 x 28 1/2 x 1 3/4 英吋)
共有3000版，其中300版全組有簽名，其餘版本只有1組有簽名，由蘇黎世 Ars Viva 出版，此作為第1版，全部未裱。
款識：1/300（黑色/粉色墨水）每組以1-10連續編碼（黑色/粉色墨水）簽名（粉色蠟筆）1（箱內藍色蠟筆）
鈴印：Schoeller Stern（7組）
估價
£7,000 - 9,000 ‡♠
成交價£13,860
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晚間及日間限量版畫
倫敦拍賣2021年6月14-15日