DÉTAILS DE L'IMAGE

Sylvia Kovacek – Vienna

Friedensreich Hundertwasser (Vienna 1928-2000 Pacific)
Arcade house with yellow tower, 1953
Watercolour on paper, primed with chalk, zinc white and fish glue and mounted on canvas
123 x 89.5 cm
Signed and dated right centre: HUNDERTWASSER / 1953
Signed and dedicated upper centre: FOR TAJIRI FROM HUNDERTWASSER
Provenance: Shinkichi Tajiri collection, Baarlo, The Netherlands (present from the artist, c. 1953-1956); since then family estate; private collection, London

Friedensreich Hundertwasser, one of the most important artists of Austria and internationally, chose his own unique path very early. His style is peculiar and different from other artists of the Avant-garde. In the first half of the 1950s, he lived in Paris, where he had exhibitions. He also exhibited in Vienna, Milan, and Rome.
He belonged to the same circle of artists as Yves Klein and Pierre Restany and was impressed by Tachism. Inspired by this, he found his very own distinctive style. In the 1950s, he played a leading role in the development of ornamental abstraction. Beyond the composition, Hundertwasser also paid attention to the philosophical aspect, which had the love for nature as its core. He strongly campaigned for the protection of nature and an ecological balance. In his individual iconography, the spiral was a central point as a symbol of life and death, starting in 1953. Another feature of his art is the avoidance of straight lines. He refused those with the reasoning that they are not found in nature and therefore make humans sick.
The square angle was warped and individually charged, freed from its rigid nature by Hundertwasser's personal style.
This exceptional artwork from 1953 is an especially good example of this. Hundertwasser called the building a painted premonition of the "Hundertwasser-Haus" that was built 40 years later in the third district of Vienna. The painted house, constructed in a decorative manner, is composed of windows, window frames, columns, and arcades, all in vibrant colors. The linear building finds its answer in the sky, which is filled with the rays of the sun. In the upper left corner, a tower dominates the painting in brilliant yellow. The person standing on a chimney seems to have climbed the top of a mountain, while the person on the right urinates from the roof. Hundertwasser wrote in his notes that he exchanged this painting for an iron sculpture by Shinkichi Tajiri, who also had an atelier in Paris and whose sculptures impressed and shaped Hundertwasser. The artwork stayed in Tajiri's collection for a long time.
Price: 590.000 EUR