80th birthday Friedensreich Hundertwasser - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 2008

Hardly any statement describes the complex personality of Friedensreich Hundertwasser as aptly as that of the art historian Wieland Schmied, who was close friends with him for half a century: "Hundertwasser was a singular figure in the contemporary art and architecture scene. He belonged nowhere and is therefore not easy to classify. That makes it so difficult to do justice to him. "There is no doubt that Hundertwasser is one of Austria 's most important artists of the world, whose work not only created excitement and polarization, his work continues to inspire thought - provoking influence in many places. February is the eighth anniversary of his death, but his work is as current and alive as ever.Hundertwasser has always tried to present his ideal relationship between art, man and nature, he has aesthetically reconsidered and artistically shaped basic ideas - and with them Friedensreich Hundertwasser's paintings have, in spite of all their differences, one thing in common: an independent, autonomous artificial language, reaching the observer in individual "perception levels." First, there is the level, the It is aimed at the understanding, the knowledge, the cognition. Always Again concrete forms - houses, windows, towers, trees, flowers, raindrops, spirals - appeal to the relationship to one's own existence: colorful, happily affirmative, delimited in its structure and standing alone within the overall composition. And there is the level of the unconscious. Connections that generate memories, longings, dreams - they form the substance of the image, its soul. The themes are always the same: the world in which we live, the spaces that surround us. The fact that Hundertwasser was able to create a cosmos full of colorful secrets, which is incomparably more beautiful than the real world in which we move, has in the end also been impressively demonstrated in his work as an architect. For Friedensreich Hundertwasser, a very different kind of applied art was the design of stamps. He described the stamp as a testimony of spaciousness and a means of telling it about it. The finished piece was for him "an authentic messenger that reaches everyone". Hundertwasser, who throughout his life sought to realize the dreams of his childhood, created stamps of aesthetic value. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, Austrian Post is now launching a new block with "Hundertwasser brands". The special feature: The motifs of these four brands were still designed by the master himself, but no longer spent in the Schilling era. It follows that this will probably be the very last edition of the Hundertwasser brands for all time. As part of WIPA08, which will take place from 18 to 21 September 2008 at the Austria Center Vienna, this special issue block will be presented to a broad public.