Vienna 1953 - Paris 1959
The artist has cut into 240 small pieces 7 watercolours no. 155A, 157 and 159 from 1953 and no. 402, 410, 411, 413 and 415 from 1959 for the volume "La Lune en Rodage I" edition by Carl Laszlo, Basel.
The pieces from the watercolours of 1953 are about postcard size, the one from the watercolours from 1959 around 50 x 30 mm. The later are partly mounted on pieces from 1953, were though mostly glued on wrapping paper primed with chalk and PV, 220 x 150 mm and surrounded with a red and blue semi-circle.
The book was published in a numbered edition 150, plus 65 unnumbered specimen for the collaborators.
Since this concerns a bibliophile contribution the artist recognised only the specimen in the book edition "La Lune en Rodage" and did not recognise the ones outside the volume which could erroneously be taken for small size originals.
- Gerbeaud-Haus, Budapest, 2016
- A. C. Fürst, Hundertwasser 1928-2000, Catalogue Raisonné, Cologne, 2002, Vol. II, pp. 469/470 (and c)
- Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, 1964, p. 186
Hundertwasser's comment on the work
My contribution to "La Lune en Rodage", Vienna, 1953 - Paris, 1959.
For the album "La Lune en Rodage", edited by Carl Laszlo, Basel, I cut watercolours, numbers 155A, 157 and 159 of 1953 and 402, 410, 411, 413 and 415 of 1959, into 240 little pieces and signed them "100 " and a small number with "Hundertwasser" (150 copies in numbered editions, 65 non-numbered for artists). The pieces stemming from watercolours of 1953 are about the size of a postcard. The pieces from the watercolours of 1959 are about 5 × 3 cm. The latter are in part pasted onto the watercolour pieces of 1953, but most of them are on pieces of white-primed packing paper about 22 × 15 cm in size and with a red-and-blue watercolour semicircle around it. Since this was a bibliophile project, I only recognise the ones which are pasted into "La Lune en Rodage" and not those which have been torn out of the album and could be taken to be small-format works in their own right. 26 copies of this edition of 240 have been painted over and transformed into pictures. They are entitled Survivants de Laszlo. (from: Catalogue Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, 1964, p. 186)
As I had feared, my tiny collages were torn out of the "La Lune en Rodage" edition, separately framed and were brought to auction as original pictures ... (from: Hundertwasser 1928-2000, Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 2, Taschen, Cologne, 2002, pp. 469-470)