Friedensreich Hundertwasser 2000 J. Harel, Vienna

About the Artist 

Friedensreich Hundertwasser began making art when he was just five years old. When the artist was eight years old, his mother, Elsa, enrolled him in Vienna’s Montessori School, but she soon began to feel the school might not prepare her only son for a job when he got older. Elsa took her son out of the school less than a year later, but Hundertwasser continued to draw.

Hundertwasser and his mother encountered many dangers throughout his childhood, especially during World War II. As Jewish citizens in Austria, Hundertwasser and his mother became targets for Adolf Hitler’s war against Jewish people. Elsa and her son lived in constant fear of Hitler and the Nazis. During this time, Hundertwasser started drawing pictures of nature. He drew only beautiful pictures of the natural world, perhaps in order to forget the ugliness of the war.

In 1948, when Hundertwasser was twenty years old, he enrolled in the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, but soon decided that he should travel instead. After leaving school, he visited Italy and France and began exhibiting his artwork in Paris and Vienna. By the 1950s, Hundertwasser was exhibiting across the world and had developed his own ideas about architecture.

Spittelau Heating Plant 2000 J. Harel, Vienna

About the Architecture

Hundertwasser believed that architecture should be in harmony with nature. His building designs are one-of-a-kind and easy to recognize. Hundertwasser buildings include trees and plants on roofs and in the windows. The buildings have curved lines that look like the curved lines in nature, have a variety of colors, and include many different kinds of window shapes. The buildings have been described as fairytale-like. The Spittelau Heating Plant in Vienna is a good example of this with its bright colors, saddleback arches, and golden globes.

Hundertwasser’s buildings help the environment by recycling materials and keeping trees alive, instead of chopping them down. Additionally, the Spittelau Heating Plant reduces the amount of garbage going to landfills while creating heat for many homes in Vienna. Hundertwasser hoped that the people who see his buildings will care as much about nature and art as he did.

Activities

1. What are some ways artists can tell people about an environmental problem?

2. Does an artist need to use words in a piece of art to tell people about an environmental problem? How can pictures talk to people?

3. What are some environmental problems you would want to tell people about? How would you let people know about the problem? How could you solve the problem through art?