About Hundertwasser's four names
In 1949, at age 20, young Stowasser decided to take the name Hundertwasser. He had learned that the syllable sto meant hundred in Russian and other Slavonic languages and he changed his surname to its more poetic form, “Hundertwasser”. The new signature added to the paintings of this year, hesitatingly at first, sometimes in the abbreviated form “Huwa” or as a visual symbol: the number 100 with three wavy lines. For a long time, the Viennese critics were unwilling to recognise the new name Hundertwasser had given himself and continued to use the name Stowasser when referring to his paintings. Only much later did Hundertwasser learn that etymologically the name Stowasser is derived from Tyrolian dialect and really meant standing water.
He changed his first name to Friedereich while he was living in Japan for a year in 1961 and wanted to find a way to transcribe his name into Japanese script, which is based on objects and concepts. Hundertwasser did not represent a problem and Friedrich was divided up into the signs for Friede (peace) and reich (realm). In 1968, he extended and clarified Friedereich – via the interim form Friedenreich, which can be seen on a few paintings from this period – to Friedensreich. His first and last names now had the same number of letters, 13, a type of magical numerology in which Hundertwasser believed and which, like a favourable omen, prophesies happiness for him as well as the people who viewed his works.
Hundertwasser’s world was an incomplete world, but one full of peace. Hundertwasser lived in a “realm of peace”, in a vegetative world. With him, everything revolved around the symbolic image of the plant, the peaceful cycle of its existence: the seed sinking into the ground – growing – budding – blossoming – wilting- withering – turning into humus, onto which a seed falls anew. This was a world without tragedy and cruelty. The animal world, based on the “eat or be eaten” principle, with its struggle for survival, its natural selection, was completely alien to Hundertwasser’s philosophy and feelings. His was the world on the fourth day of Creation: “and the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seeds and the tree yielding fruit; and there were lights in the firmament of the heaven to rule over the day and over the night and divide the light from the darkness.” In such a world came man, created on the sixth day; not to have dominion over it, but to live in peace with it and all its creatures. But the elixir of life that made everything fertile was water: hence the name he chose to complement Hundertwasser and Friedensreich: Regentag.
The third name, Regentag (Rainy Day), was the name he gave to his boat – and which the boat gave back to him. He identified more with his boat than he did with any of his houses – none of which became a permanent residence. Continually on the move, his restlessness found its most consistent expression in the Regentag. He was at home everywhere and nowhere when he was on board and completely at peace with himself.
The Regentag had previously been an old salt-hauler which ran between Sicily and North Africa and was originally called the Giuseppe T. Hundertwasser bought her in Palermo in 1968 and sailed with her to Venice. In the docks of Pellestrina, in the Venetian lagoon, he had her refurbished and gradually made her fit for navigation on the high seas. Hundertwasser painted his boat and gave her brightly coloured sails. He acquired a captain’s licence and lived for months on board – as can be seen in the beautiful film made by Peter Schamoni. In 1976, the Regentag sailed to New Zealand, where she found a permanent mooring in the Bay of Islands. Hundertwasser was on board much of the way.
He decided on the name Regentag because “on a rainy day the colours start to shine. That’s why to me a dreary day – a rainy day – is the most beautiful day. That’s a day when I can work. When it rains I am happy. And when it rains I know my day has begun!” From 1972 onwards, the name Regentag, cropped up in his paintings, not only as a designation of the place where the artist was painting; but also as a signature. In it, the person, place and time merged into a harmonious whole to which the completed work stood monument. Regentag had created it.
The name Dunkelbunt (Dark-Bright) was the last to be added to the others, in New Zealand in 1978. Like Regentag, Dunkelbunt was primarily connected with his understanding of colour. He called the person who produced a series of photographs of his New Zealand island paradise Dunkelbunt, as if he wanted to ascribe to him the the dusky light of an intermediate realm between anonymity identity – and made no secret of the fact that he himself was Dunkelbunt. Dunkelbunt photographed the Realm of Peace (Friedensreich), to which the Regentag had travelled and in which Hundertwasser painted: “Dunkelbunt means: in pure, vibrant, radiantly deep colours, a little sad like on a rainy day.” His four names therefore encapsulate his entire oeuvre.
Published in:
Schmied, Wieland (ed.): Hundertwasser 1928–2000, Catalogue Raisonné.
Vol. I: Schmied, Wieland: Personality, Life, Work. Taschen, Cologne, 2002, p. 35