SPIRAL TREE - 45th anniversary of the postage stamp
10. December 2020
Spiral Tree, postage stamp for Austria, 1975
Just as Hundertwasser criticized the ugly, soulless buildings made of prefabricated parts, he also saw the postage stamps getting uglier and uglier.
At the beginning of the 20th century a movement had started from Vienna that had turned the postage stamp into a branch of art. One of the leading painters of the Vienna Secession, Koloman Moser, was commissioned with a series of postage stamps in 1906 and he designed these postage stamps in a modern style to be printed in a masterful engraving process. Koloman Moser's stamps and those of the subsequent designers were reproductions of templates, whereas Hundertwasser paved the way for a decisive innovation, because now an original artistic draft of the stamp was to be taken as the basis, and not just a reproduction of any existing image like a seal brand.
At the beginning of the 20th century a movement had started from Vienna that had turned the postage stamp into a branch of art. One of the leading painters of the Vienna Secession, Koloman Moser, was commissioned with a series of postage stamps in 1906 and he designed these postage stamps in a modern style to be printed in a masterful engraving process. Koloman Moser's stamps and those of the subsequent designers were reproductions of templates, whereas Hundertwasser paved the way for a decisive innovation, because now an original artistic draft of the stamp was to be taken as the basis, and not just a reproduction of any existing image like a seal brand.
In 1974 Hundertwassere approached the responsible minister Erwin Lanc with the idea that once a year there should be an issue of stamps designed by Austrian artists. The Austrian postal service began the series "Modern Art from Austria" with Hundertwasser's "Spiral Tree" (Date of first issue: December 11, 1975). Until 2008 appeared 34 postage stamps by Austrian artists in this series. Hundertwasser and Walter Koschatzky chose the artists on behalf of the Austrian Post until their dead, Hundertwasser additionally supervised the collaborations between the artists involved and the engraver, Wolfgang Seidel.
Hundertwasser and engraver Wolfgang Seidel on occasion of a postage stamp production in the Austrian State Printing Office, 1995.
Hundertwasser collected postage stamps as a child, and they were for him a window on to the world and a signpost towards painting. In 1943 he wrote in his poem "The Secret of the Postage Stamp":
But if you're an outsider reading these lines
And if you miss joy because something is eating into your life,
Believe my and other collectors' advice, what is best:
Watch nature, do sports or become a philatelist!
But if you're an outsider reading these lines
And if you miss joy because something is eating into your life,
Believe my and other collectors' advice, what is best:
Watch nature, do sports or become a philatelist!
His enthusiasm for stamps remained with him his whole life long. He put great importance to the fact that when he had to send a letter or a card, he would always use particularly beautiful stamps. For important post he stuck on several stamps so the appearance of the envelope would be particularly colourful and varied. For him stamps were ambassadors of a country and its culture, its landscape and uniqueness.
In 1979 Hundertwasser wrote on the occasion of a series of postage stamps for Senegal:
I have loved postage stamps long before I became a painter. It was a big joy to collect these little coloured pictures, to separate them from the letters which came from far away (…) The stamps and those who made them were for me the real ambassadors of this earth, the real representatives of the world parliament. The small pictures I can carry with me in small books. They are like venerable objects, like icons.
Shortly after the end of World War II, Hundertwasser conducted a lively correspondence with philatelists all over the world. Here you can see him with a box containing this old correspondence. Photo: Peter Lehner. Copyright Kronen Zeitung.