Hundertwasser's quotes

I think architecture was the aim all the time. I painted because I was not allowed to do on a big scale. I was dreaming that the paintings were nothing but sketches and models for bigger things.

SPIRALS - Spirals first appeared in Hundertwasser work in 1953. At the University of Vienna's medical school, he saw the French documentary film "Images de la Folie", which presented the creativity of schizophrenic patients at Saint-Anne, the main psychiatric hospital in Paris. The film showed paintings done by the insane, and HUndertwasser saw some patients making spirals. The spiral seemed to embody both life and death. It was an intersection of living an inanimate matter, able to express all of nature, all of creation.

STRAIGHT LINES - If a lion is stalking you, or a shark is out to kill you, you are of course in mortal danger. We have lived with these dangers for millions of years. The straight line is a man-made danger. There are so many lines, millions of lines, but only one of them is deadly and that is the straight line drawn with a ruler. The danger of the straight line cannot be compared with the danger of organic lines described by snakes, for instance. The straight line is completely alien to mankind, to life, to all creation. It is a fiction that exists everywhere you live. Our whole civilization is founded on the straight line. The straight line came to humanity with the brick, with modular construction.

COLOURS - When I make the materials myself I am there from the start. If the painter takes the paint ready-made and the materials ready-made, a big part is prefabricated. You dont' have to grind pigments anymore, but this grinding process, this manufacturing process, is very important for the artist, because it is the starting point. A painter cannot miss out on the build-up of the painting.
I try not to use materials from plants and animals, they fade. What I use is inorganic, like bricks, volcanic sand, soil and coal, burned charcoal, grey and white lime, and bricks, which you can find in yellow, red, almost black - these are the best colours. These are all very lasting and I grind the colours and mix them with oil or with egg or with acrylic or polyvinyl or with wax. I don't depend on stores. To a high degree I want to be independent even where paint is concerned, and secondly, the colours you buy in the store are not so good. They are so finely ground that they don't have soul anymore. When I grind them myself they are much rougherand have a texture you can see and feel. There are no colours you can buy which have a feeling and a life. This is one of the secrets of my paintings.

AN ARTIST'S DUTY - A painter should be avant-garde, should be in advance of the needs of our society and ecology - which is in a state of crisis. A painter should act as an example against the consumer society. He should be an example of how to live in a wasteless society. And what does the painter do? He does the contrary. He splashes around and wastes the paint. He is worse, wasting valuable stuff. I consider painting a religious activity; the substance of paint is a sacred material. It should be cared for like gold. It should be used wisely and intelligently. At least as bread was used in the war. Being an artist is a way of being, it's not just what you produce.

VEGETATIVE PAINTING - I believe my painting is totally different because it is vegetative painting. One reason why other people don't want to paint vegetatively is because it starts so incospicuously, without any éclat or drum rolls. Instead it developes quite slowly and steadily, and that doesn't suit our social order - people want immediate results, achieved through exploitation.
The help of time is incredible in art. Something grows; then it can't fail. Only quick things fail. You feel that they do not have that patina, the mark of evolution, the mark of age. Slow-growing trees are better than fast-growing, the wood is better, they look better.

MONEY - How little you need to live. At that time I already had my philosophy. I said: how silly to always ask for more. The Communists, the Socialists, the unions - everybody is concentrating on trying to get more, to get more money and more of what money can buy. What would happen if people instead of asking for more and more would ask for less and less? They would be happier, would be healthier, wouldn't eat rich food, they'd give up their cars for bicycles, grow vegetables in their garden; everyone would need less money - I think that would be an interesting experiment.
When i was in Paris i rode a bicycles to a neighbouring farmer to get wheat. For one day's work i would get 10 kilos of wheat, on which i could live for three months. I divided the wheat into portions and had a fantastic meal every day. I could have it ground, eat it as a soup, make bread, bake little cakes, make a salad. Bro told me that wheat is the cheapest food if you get it from the farmer, not the shop. It is just amazing how little you can live on and be independent, because if you want to be independent you must be independent of money. My mother said you must have a profession to earn money, otherwise you cannot survive. I told her: "Money is of no importance and i can live without money, or with so little money that it does not count". I went to Paris and I actually lived on $ 50 a year, and after a year I still had that money in my pocket, because you can easily get a dollar from a friend. "Give me a dollar", and they give it to you and you live for a week on it. It is not a struggle. It was just to prove things, and it made me extremely happy. In that way I lived for several years, I painted happily, I lived with friends, they invited me. I had a bicycle somebody lent me, so I did not have to spend any money.