KunstHausWien

Hundertwasser's KunstHausWien, a colourful and exotic addition to Austria's museum landscape

"The architecture of the KunstHausWien is the first bastion against the false order of the straight line, the first bridgehead against the grid system and the chaos of the absurd", wrote Hundertwasser in autumn 1990, as finally a permanent site for his work was found. After four years of conversion work an old furniture factory in Vienna's third district has become the KunstHausWien, a colourful and exotic addition to Austria's museum landscape. It has 4000 sq. metres of exhibition space. Two of the four floors house changing exhibitions of international art, while the other two show a permanent exhibition of Hundertwasser's work.

This MuseumGuide reveals the unique architecture of the KunstHausWien and shows a representative choice of Hundertwasser's pictures, graphic work, tapestries, architectural models and stamps. It also contains various famous manifestos by the artist, such as "The third skin in the third district", "Window Dictatorship and the Window Right", "Tree Tenants are the Ambassadors of the Free Forests in the City", "Everything situated horizontally in the open air belongs to nature", and "The Uneven Floor".

About the Series:
Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

• a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
• approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
• a concise biography

About the author:
Wieland Schmied has been President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich since 1995. He has organised over one hundred art exhibitions and is the author of many books on 19th- and 20th century art, including monographs on Caspar David Friedrich, Alfred Kubin, Giorgio de Chirico, Edward Hopper and Francis Bacon.