News

Hundertwasser continues

18. February 2020
Hundertwasser died on February 19, 2000, but he lives on in his works, in his architecture and in his manifestos, his messages of beauty and a life in harmony with nature and individual creativity. Hundertwasser is honored with a number of exhibitions and publications, but also with important architectural projects.

From February 21 to August 31, 2020, the Leopold Museum in Vienna is showing the exhibition “Hundertwasser - Schiele. Imagine Tomorrow.“ Made up of loans from Austrian and international museums and collections as well as previously unpublished archive material, the exhibition traces the artistic and intellectual kinship of two outstanding Austrian artists of the 20th century. On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition, Bazon Brock will re-enact the "The Endless Line" carried out by Hundertwasser, Bazon Brock and Herbert Schuldt in Hamburg in 1959.

Two important Hundertwasser architecture projects are being realised in New Zealand and Korea. In Whangarei, New Zealand, the Hundertwasser Art Center and Wairau Maori Art Gallery will present Hundertwasser's legacy in the southern hemisphere. This Hundertwasser Museum is dedicated to the work and legacy of the artist in New Zealand (1973-2000).

In Korea on the Jeju volcanic island, a UNESCO World Heritage site, a Hundertwasser Memorial Park with Hundertwasser Museum, a digital event center and meditation center is being built, embedded in an adventure park on 40,000 m2.

Hunderwasser is known in Korea not only for two exhibitions in 2010 and 2016, but also for the Hundertwasser Immersive Art Show that multimedia artist Gianfranco Iannuzzi created for The Bunker on Jeju Island. With 600,000 visitors, this multimedia installation was just as successful as the production for Klimt and Hundertwasser in the Carrières des Lumières in Les Baux-de-Provence and in the Atelier des Lumières in Paris with 1,000,000 visitors. The multimedia Hundertwasser experience staged by Iannuzzi has been an integral part of the program at the Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig since 2016.

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of death, the book „Hundertwasser for Future“ , is published by Hatje Cantz, Berlin, with quotes from Hundertwasser's socio-critical and ecological manifestos, letters, speeches and public demonstrations.

The picture book „Hundertwasser - The House of Happy Spirits“ - has just been published by Prestel Verlag Munich. A colorful house in which the trees also have their place changes the city - the Hundertwasser House in Vienna served as a model. The book, published in English and German, is a licensed edition of the first publication by the French publisher L'Èlan vert.

The Nordiska Akvarellmuseet in Skärhamn, Sweden is planning an exhibition of Hundertwasser's painting work for 2021 and will especially focus on his watercolors.

Also for 2021, the Verein Bahnhof 2000 Uelzen e.V. is developing a decentralized exhibition „Hundertwasser - Ecology and Beauty“. Hundertwasser is shown as a pioneer of ecological modernity, as a pioneer of the green movement, as a visionary of green architecture and as a reminder of a peace treaty with nature. The association Bahnhof 2000 Uelzen eV is also designing a lighthouse project "The horizontal belongs to nature", a campaign for the greening of roof areas and the use of solar energy, in which all German cities with Hundertwasser architectures will be involved: Darmstadt, Magdeburg, Frankfurt, Uelzen, Essen.

A film project on Hundertwasser's ecological activities is planned in cooperation with Schamoni Filmproduktion in Munich in order to anchor Hundertwasser's role as a green visionary from the very beginning. With Peter Schamoni, Hundertwasser made the award-winning film "Hundertwasser's Rainy Day" in 1972, in which Hundertwasser's ship "Regentag" plays a major role. The ship "Regentag" has been anchored in the port of Tulln on the Danube since 2004, was listed as a historic monument in 2015 and has undergone extensive repairs since 2018.

The hub, contact point, mediator, coordinator and organizer of all of these and countless other projects is the Hundertwasser Non-Profit Private Foundation in Vienna. It sees its task in protecting the work, the legacy and concerns of Hundertwasser, spreading it through exhibitions, publications, cooperative projects of all kinds and supporting efforts for a more humane world in harmony with nature.