- 22
Friedensreich Hundertwasser
Description
- Friedensreich Hundertwasser
- LA TOUR DE BABEL PERFORE LE SOLEIL - UN SPIRALOID (THE TOWER OF BABEL PIERCES THE SUN - A SPIRALOID)
- signed and dated Paris 1959; signed and dated 1959 three times; signed, titled and dated Paris 1959 on the reverse
- oil, egg tempera and watercolour on wrapping paper primed with chalk and PV mounted on canvas
- 130 by 162cm.
- 51 1/8 by 63 3/4 in.
Provenance
Galerie Raymond Cordier, Paris
Gallery K, Washington
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner circa 1961
Exhibited
Paris, 1st Paris Biennial, 1959
Paris, Galerie Raymond Cordier, Rétrospective Hundertwasser 1950-1960, 1960, illustrated in colour (detail)
Seattle, World's Fair Fine Art Pavilion, 1962, no. CI 57
London, Tate Gallery, Painting and Sculpture of a decade, 54-64, p. 241, no. 309, illustrated
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum; Stockholm, Moderna Museet; Vienna, Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts, Hundertwasser, 1964-65, no. 65
Sarasota, The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, After Surrealism: Metaphors and Similes, 1972, p. 7, illustrated in color
Literature
Wieland Schmied, Hundertwasser, Vollständiger Oeuvre-Katalog, Hannover 1964, p. 184
Pierre Restany, Happy Hundertwasser - Hundertwasser Heureux, New York 1978, p. 83, illustrated in colour
Benedikt Taschen, Hundertwasser, Lost and Stolen Pictures Postcardbook, Cologne 1995, illustrated in colour
Andrea Christa Fürst, Hundertwasser, Werkverzeichnis-Catalogue Raisonné 1928-2000, Volume II, Cologne 2002, p. 384, no. 421, illustrated in colour
Catalogue Note
"My spiral resulted from my attempt to attain goals slowly. Confronted by this strange and unexplored landscape, it was necessary to give oneself new rules and forms. One of these forms alone is significant - the form which corresponds to the effect created when opposites begin to move. Their movement is the spiral" (Friedensreich Hunderwasser quoted in 1961 in Andrea Christa Fürst, Op. Cit., p. 65)
Like no other formal motif, the spiral combines Hunderwasser's two favourite thematic groups: architecture and vegetation. He became known as the painter of spirals and it seems apt that he should turn his attention to the Tower of Babel in 1959. Perhaps one of the most famous mythical constructions, the presence of no hard edges and its potential construction to infinity made the Tower of Babel a symbol of the coming together of all man without divide. Isolated, this great monument was said to be a self sufficient community filled with people of all ages and nationalities. Famously adopted by Pieter Brueghel the Elder in two of his most renowned paintings (see Fig. 1), the Tower has also been a source of influence across the ages and media, perhaps most poignantly in the film of Fritz Lang, providing one of the key symbolic moments in Metropolis.