Modern Furniture: More from my European backpacking trip - the colorful and unusual Kunst Haus Wien in Vienna

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

More from my European backpacking trip - the colorful and unusual Kunst Haus Wien in Vienna

I have really dropped the ball on sharing my images from my 2010 summer backpacking around Europe, so I'm going to try to do it more often. I'll pick up right where we left off, in beautiful Vienna, Austria. I'm sharing with you today the very cool and unusual Kunst Haus Wien, a museum celebrating the work of Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

A little bit about the house and Friedensreich:

Hundertwasser's original and unruly artistic vision expressed itself in pictorial art, environmentalism, philosophy, and design of facades, postage stamps, flags, and clothing (among other areas). The common themes in his work utilised bright colours, organic forms, a reconciliation of humans with nature, and a strong individualism, rejecting straight lines. He remains sui generis, although his architectural work is comparable to Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) in its use of biomorphic forms and the use of tile. He was also inspired by the art of the Vienna Secession, and by the Austrian painters Egon Schiele (1890–1918) and Gustav Klimt (1862–1918). He was fascinated by spirals, and called straight lines "the devil's tools". He called his theory of art "transautomatism", based on Surrealist automatism, but focusing on the experience of the viewer, rather than the artist. via Wikipedia

The museum ... is designed in typical Hundertwasser style, with wavy, undulating floors and a notable lack of straight lines. Bright, glaring colours are used throughout, and foliage abounds. There is a fountain in the foyer, and a restaurant with abundant plant life reminiscent of a winter garden. An unevenly winding staircase leads to the main part of the exhibition on the upper floors. To keep the rooms flooded with daylight, Hundertwasser, who was said to be fond of sunlight and therefore windows too, had a glass frontage built in front of the facade.via Wikipedia

Hundertwasser designed an apartment building close to the Museum, it also "features undulating floors ("an uneven floor is a divine melody to the feet"), a roof covered with earth and grass, and large trees growing from inside the rooms, with limbs extending from windows." -via Wikipedia

The exterior...

A shot from the staircase. Notice the curve of the floor where it meets the wall below.

4 images above via my honey

Below are some shots of the gallery spaces

via Kunst Haus Wien

Hudertwasser dabbled in almost all forms of 2D and 3D art. He started as a painter but ultimately focused on architecture. Here are some of my favorite works in some of his various mediums:

so beautiful! Many of his lithographs have metallic gold accents, which makes them especially beautiful, but that aspect doesn't come through well in photographs.
via Hundertwasser.com