Hundertwasser Biography (A Selection) Camilla Jalving
1928 Born 15 December, Vienna, as Friedrich Stowasser. His father dies the following year and Friedrich grows up with his mother as a single child. 1942-43 Friedrich joins the Hitler Youth to protect his Jewish mother and her family. During 1943, 69 members of his mother’s family are deported and die. Only Friedrich and his mother remain. This year Friedrich starts drawing and painting seriously. 1948 Graduates from school and spends three months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Gives a speech at the Leopoldskron Castle in Salzburg, titled Everyone Must Be Creative. 1949-50 Starts the travelling that would characterize his life. This year he travels around Italy, where he meets René Brô. He winds up in Paris, where he takes the name Hundertwasser. The following year, he enrols at the Parisian art school École des Beaux-Arts but drops out on the very first day. 1951 Spends the winter and spring in Tunisia and Morocco. Becomes a member of the Art Club, Vienna, where he has his first one-man show the following year. Starts making his own clothes and shoes, what he calls “Creative Clothing.”
Opposite page: Hundertwasser’s early performative action Tokyo Stroll, 1961. Photo: Keisuke Kojima
1953 Paints his first spiral painting and returns to Paris. It is there the following year that he starts writing several texts of aesthetic theory and begins to number his works.
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1956 Sails as a deckhand on the SS Bauta from Söderhamm, Sweden, to Hull, England. 1957 Acquires La Picaudière, a small country house in Normandy. Publishes several texts of aesthetic theory. 1958 Marries Herta Leithner in Gibraltar, but they divorce two years later. Gives his first reading of the Mouldiness Manifesto against Rationalism in Architecture at the Sekau monastery in Austria. 1959 Receives an honorary prize at the São Paulo Biennial. With fellow artists Ernst Fuchs and Arnulf Rainer, he founds the alternative art academy Pintorarium. As a visiting instructor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg, he carries out the painting action The Hamburg Line together with Bazon Brock and Herbert Schuldt. 1960 Stages The Nettle Campaign in Paris. 1961 Visits Japan, meets his future wife Yuko Ikewada (divorced in 1966). In Japan he translates his first name into the Japanese characters ‘peace’ (Friede) and ‘realm’ (Reich), from 1961 onward naming himself Friedereich and later Friedensreich. Receives the Japanese Mainichi Prize and has a succesful exhibition at Tokyo Gallery. 1962 Stays in Venice, on the island of Giudecca, which becomes one of his regular bases. First retrospective at the Venice Biennale.