Hundertwasser's comment on the work

A sister painting to 224 The Long Way. I painted it in Brô's garage studio, Impasse des Sureaux, and placed it in the snow to photograph it. It was important to me that one saw something of the background in the photo, e.g., flower pots, cracks in the sidewalk, my feet, my face, a fence. I often put my pictures outside to compare them with trees and to see if they were up to the comparison: see picture 177, reproduced in the Kestner Catalogue, p. 154, on a stairway, and 176 in the Studio Facchetti catalogue, Paris, 1954, with my head.It is difficult to deal with collectors; that's why dealers are good, as a buffer. Collectors are usually not normal. So they collect what they can't do themselves. The real ones, I mean, who collect for investment purposes or because of their social or cultural status, are normal. In the case of this picture it was Henry M. Lazar. The sales negotiations and visits often lasted for weeks and months. He usually came late in the evening because he thought artists had late breakfasts. (from: Hundertwasser 1928-2000, Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 2, Taschen, Cologne, 2002, p. 303)