Slow Travel Under the Sun

Friedensreich Hundertwasser was born in Vienna on December 15, 1928 to a Jewish mother and Catholic father. Hundertwasser’s art evokes a dream world of swirling organic forms, hypnotic faces, and recurring motifs of houses, windows, domes, and gardens. As an architect, he rejected the rational modernism of his era and designed houses with undulating floors, multicolored facades, and trees emerging from their roofs. In his art and activism he took a stance against the inhumanity of the modern world, promoting individual creativity, non-conformity, and living in harmony with nature. His manifestos and nude speeches were especially popular during the heyday of the counterculture movement in the 1960s. By the time of his death in 2000 he had become one of Austria’s best-known avant-garde artists, with a museum in Vienna dedicated to his art.
 
In Hundertwasser’s art and architecture he rejected the straight line as "something cowardly, drawn with a rule, without thought or feeling." He favored the spiral and described its significance as follows: “The spiral stands for life and death in any direction. From the inside out, it runs in the direction of birth, of life, and then on through apparent dissolution into…a realm that cannot be measured.” He often placed complementary colors (in this case red and green) next to one another to emphasize its double movement.