Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Inscribed indistinctly and dated 1963
Egg tempera, oil, paper and tissue paper with polyvinyl laid down on canvas

Galerie Aenne Abels, Cologne
Luciano Pistoi, Turin
Private Collection, Italy
Private Collection, Europe
Sotheby's, London, 26 June 2002, Lot 31
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exh. Cat., Hannover, Kestner-Gesellschaft; Bern, Kunsthalle; Hagen, Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum; Vienna, Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts; Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum; Stockholm, Moderna Museet, Hundertwasser, 1964 - 1965, p. 27, no. 568, illustrated
The Art Gallery Magazine: America's Art Exhibition Magazine, Vol. VIII, April 1965, illustrated in colour (cover)
Andrea Christa Fürst, Hundertwasser 1928-2000, Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. II, Cologne 2002, p. 467, no. 568, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the ochre is slightly darker in the original.Condition: Please refer to the Contemporary Art department for a professional condition report.
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Painted in the extremely vibrant palette of colours that is so typical of Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s captivating works, Bebrillter Mann mit Hausrock is an iconic example of the artist’s unique visual language. Clearly demonstrating the influence of Art Nouveau and Viennese Secessionism, but most of all the artist’s interest in the relationship between man and nature, the work is an outstanding example of the genre-defying practice that makes Hundertwasser one of the most original artists of the post-war era.

Executed in 1963, Bebrillter Mann mit Hausrock perfectly captures the artist’s central concern - the relationship between man and nature. In both his art and architecture, Hundertwasser was on a continuous search for a symbiosis that would combine man-made and natural elements into a powerful new language. The present work captures this in a stunning display of colour, depicting a figure with glasses painted in the artist’s recognisable organically flowing patterns. It is one of the idiosyncrasies of Hundertwasser’s art that the apparently dichotomous concerns of the natural and the man- made are inextricably linked: vegetative forms seem almost solid, whereas manufactured forms appear to have grown organically.

Prominently featured in Bebrillter Mann mit Hausrock, as the title (which translates as Man with Spectacles in a Housecoat) suggests, are the figure’s large glasses. Rather than being transparent, they are drawn in one of the artist’s signature motifs - the spiral. As Hundertwasser remarked, “The spiral, as I see it, is a vegetative spiral, with swellings, where the lines become thicker and thinner, like the rings of a tree trunk, but with this difference, that they do not lie within one another, but form a coil’ (Friedensreich Hundertwasser quoted in: Exh. Cat., Austria Presents Hunderwasser to the Continents, Glarus 1980, p. 491).

Depicting the world in a decidedly organic style that typifies the artist’s outlook on life, Hundertwasser’s unique practice integrates the human world into the natural environment that it is intrinsically connected to. With its vibrant and colourful appearance, Bebrillter Mann mit Hausrock is an exceptional example of the artist’s original visual language and idiosyncratic worldview.