Hundertwasser's comment on the work

Tears and raindrops became analogous concepts which repeatedly cast their spell on me because of their similar functions. They became a part of my "repertoire", so to speak, like the spiral, windows, portholes, fences, almond-shaped eyes, "alien heads", steamers, sediment strips, Kampmann trees, box houses, cells with nucleus, keystones, smoke and much more.

Hundertwasser in a letter to Maria Bilger
Waldviertel, Epiphany, 1970
Dear Maria Biljan, I had hoped you would be tactful enough and I wouldn't have to say it. But as you keep insisting, I must write you that you will not be getting my watercolour for 2 reasons:
1. For the exhibition of Hundertwasser pictures with Schidlo-Riedl you cut up my watercolour "OASIS AFTER THE TALE OF THAIB BEN THAMI", work no. 115, without my consent, without my knowledge. I only got the middle portion of it back, but to date not the cut-off edges. I must insist on your returning the cut-off pieces, though it is questionable whether a restorer can put the cut pieces together again. So I think this cutting cannot be repaired. I do not understand how you, an artist, can treat others' works of art this way.
2. The watercolour "Weeping Man with Hat" I was able to save; without my efforts it would have been lost. When I asked about this painting so I could photograph it you couldn't remember where it was; in your former flat on Karlsplatz, which you had already vacated by that time, all that was left was rubbish to be thrown away. Everything you considered worth the trouble of taking with you was gone. What remained was supposed to be thrown out by the new tenant, who was already moving in. There were piles of paper for recycling, boxes, sketches, everything to be trown away, and somewhere in all this, amongst worthless posters, my painting. With the picture facing the wall, indicating that you liked the reverse side better than the "Weeping Man", horribly fixed to the wall with thumbtacks and scotch tape, faded and with stains from water leaking from the ceiling. Or these stains were (are) so bad that they are maybe coffee stains or something.
Such is the damage:
1. Streaks of stain over the whole painting going all the way through the paper.
2. Damage from thumbtacks and scotch tape.
3. Fading of the reverse side, also painted, probably from the sun (blue paper turned brown). I brought the watercolour to the restorer Caspar, who spent a year trying to save the painting. He gave it back to me, stating that the damage is so great that it cannot be restored!You will understand that I cannot entrust a watercolour of mine to someone who lets it go to ruin in such a way and also put it in the rubbish for the dustbin. If I had not intervened, it would have long since landed in the garbage dump. Here, too, I cannot understand how you, an artist, can treat the works of your colleagues in this way. If you had bought the painting, perhaps you would have been more careful with it. Probably. You know how attched I am to my paintings. Here my artistic pride has been trodden on. Anyway. A woman who abuses a child and then throws it away also loses any right to the child, especially when it isn't hers, but is just one she has been entrusted with.
If you insist I'll send you the various documents:
1. Photo of the cut-up painting,
2. Expert opinion of the restorer etc. So, this unpleasant matter is now behind me, and I would be happy to see you again and to see what you are doing. And to show you what I have done in the meantime. I paid Kumpf a visit and am now in Waldviertel, in the old saw-mill of my mother's.
Cordially, Hundertwasser
Am completely snowed in here at - 4° F. outside, painting.
(from: Hundertwasser 1928-2000, Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 2, Taschen, Cologne, 2002, pp. 188-189)