ADT - Tourisme en Alsace

Hundertwasser

31 may – 5 october 2008

Eight years after the death of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, certainly the best-known Austrian artist of the second half of the 20th century, a retrospective devoted to this painter, architect and social critic has been organised by the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, widely considered as a leading cultural institution for the art of German-speaking lands, owing to its geographical location and its unequalled late Gothic collections.

Paintings executed in bright colours, typical examples of the style of this surprising and multi-faceted artist, are presented alongside applied art pieces and early works. Following the itinerary through the galleries, the visitor is encouraged to enter into the artist’s special world. At first glance perceived as primitive and colourful, the universe created by Hundertwasser may on closer examination be found to convey a message communicated by recurring themes. The spiral, found repeatedly throughout his works, may represent an unending path, the cycle of life, or perhaps the link between the interior and exterior worlds. Nature, omnipresent throughout the artist’s works, reminds the modern citizen of the importance of living in harmony with one’s surroundings. Lastly, water, considered as a gift from heaven by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, whose adopted name may be translated as “the realm of peace with a hundred waters”, returns often as a leitmotif in his paintings, in the form of rivers, oceans and rain.

Self-taught as a painter and as an architect, an outspoken and controversial social critic, Hundertwasser brought shape to his ideas by working in an inordinate variety of media, from a postage stamp for the United Nations to the famous Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna.