LEOPOLD MUSEUM HONORS HUNDERTWASSER ON THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARTIST’S DEATH

19.02.2020

Comprehensive exhibition "Hundertwasser – Schiele. Imagine Tomorrow" and re-staging of “The Hamburg Line”

Vienna (OTS) – 19th February 2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000). From 20th February, the Leopold Museum dedicates a comprehensive exhibition to the painter, pioneer of the environmental movement and designer of living spaces whose influence extended well beyond the borders of Austria. While Hundertwasser shaped 20th-century art in a characteristic and inimitable manner, his intense exploration of the personality and oeuvre of Egon Schiele (1890–1918) is largely unknown. “Unexpected but convincing correspondences between the works of Hundertwasser and Schiele” inspired Leopold Museum Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger to initiate this extraordinary project.

Curated by Robert Fleck and conceived as an artistic dialogue, the exhibition features some 200 objects, leading via Hundertwasser’s Mold Manifesto to Schiele’s depictions of houses and cities, and via the latter’s landscapes to aspects of vegetal abstraction in Hundertwasser’s works. The Leopold Museum presents these two icons of Austrian art, who together cover 100 years of art history, for the first time in an entirely new light, illustrating the ties of their special kinship.

“The Vienna Line”

Prior to the official opening, a special event realized in the context of the exhibition started on 18th February 2020. During a 36-hour re-enactment, lasting until 20th February, students of the University of Applied Arts Vienna are re-staging the “infinite line” under the aegis of the artist and art theoretician Bazon Brock.

As part of his guest lectureship at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts, Hundertwasser set out to create an “infinite line” on 18th December 1959 together with the author/artists Bazon Brock and Herbert Schuldt. The project would later go down in the annals of art history as The Hamburg Line. The performative act saw participants take turns day and night to draw an irregular line over walls and windows using brushes and paint with the aim of developing Hundertwasser’s vegetal spiral in living spaces. The unauthorized action caused such a stir in the media that the head of the university banned the continuation of the happening, with Hundertwasser prematurely ending the line drawing on 20th December.

The line drawn in Vienna as a homage to Friedensreich Hundertwasser will form part of the exhibition. The action will be captured on film and will be made accessible to exhibition goers through a video documentary.

Hundertwasser-Schiele. Imagine Tomorrow
21st February to 31st August 2020

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