The New Zealand home of an acclaimed Austrian artist, architect and environmentalist is due to open to the public for the first time early next year.
Friedensreich Hundertwasser is known worldwide for his colourful, eccentric buildings, but he was also decades ahead of his time in his dedication to protecting the natural world.
Hundertwasser spent much of his final decades at an isolated property at Kaurinui, about half an hour’s drive from Kawakawa, where he was able to live out his environmental ideals.
Close friend Richard Smart, now the New Zealand representative of the Vienna-based Hundertwasser Foundation, said the artist loved Kawakawa because townsfolk treated him like just another local character.
In Europe, he was hounded by people demanding autographs and photos.
Smart said Hundertwasser especially loved his property at Kaurinui, and spent decades transforming the almost treeless dairy farm into a thriving forest.
“It was his New Zealand home. It was a place he came to as a getaway, a hideaway, a retreat, a sanctuary. It was a place he could work away from the public eye. It was always closely protected and guarded as a private space.”
Smart said the property had barely changed since Hundertwasser’s death in February 2000, at the age of 72, on a cruise ship off the Queensland coast.
Friedensreich Hundertwasser was a renowned artist, architect and environmentalist.
This summer would be the first time the public, on small group tours, would be allowed in.
“This will give people an insight, a close personal look at how he lived and how he practised his philosophies. It is really unprecedented because it has never been opened before in this way.”
Smart said no opening date had been set but it was likely to be late summer.
The opening hinged on the arrival of an exhibition the Hundertwasser Foundation was assembling in Vienna, and which would be displayed in a new, purpose-built gallery.
One of the aims of opening the property to the public was to demonstrate how he put his philosophy of living in harmony with nature into practice.
“He wasn’t just espousing it for other people to do while he did something else himself. He really lived it and we’d like to show that,” Smart said.
“He lived here in a simple way, with a low impact on the environment, integrated with nature. He didn’t need all the trappings and the glitz and expensive stuff.”
Whangārei's Hundertwasser Art Centre and Wairau Māori Art Centre. Photo / NZME
The property had undergone restoration but the aim was not to make it look pristine and new.
“We wanted it to be authentic, to be just like it was when he was alive and using the place.”
The tour takes in a pigsty which Hundertwasser converted into a simple, characterful dwelling.
His final shopping list - fax paper and garlic are among the items he jotted down - is still hanging on the wall, as if he left yesterday.
At the Bottle House, originally the farm’s milking shed, Hundertwasser first tried techniques that became part of his signature style, such as bottle walls and earth roofs.
The Bottle House, once a milking shed, was the place Hundertwasser first made bottle windows, later put to good use at the Kawakawa toilets. Photo / RNZ - Peter de Graaf
The tour also stops at a cave he dug into a hillside - he believed every property should have a cave where one could sit and reflect - with a roof crawling with cave wētā.
Other sights include his boat La Giudecca, named after the island in Venice where it was built, and his simple yet ingenious systems for diverting water and generating power.
Smart said the original farmhouse, which was riddled with asbestos and borer, had been dismantled and replaced by a building in the distinctive Hundertwasser style.
The Eyeslit House, named for its shape, was a hub where visitors could rest and order a coffee after the tour.
Fundraising co-ordinator Helen Whittaker said the property had been named Living Hundertwasser, to distinguish it from the artist’s other homes around the world.
“We decided on the name because he converted what had been a dairy farm into a living creation. That’s how he wanted to live, immersed in nature. Also, he’s buried here, under a tulip tree, so he lives on through the property.”
Fundraising coordinator Helen Whittaker and Hundertwasser Foundation representative Richard Smart at the Eyeslit House. Photo / RNZ - Peter de Graaf
The tour also takes in Hundertwasser’s grave in a cemetery he called the Garden of the Happy Dead.
Smart said he wanted to be buried under a tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipifera, so his body would provide sustenance as it grew.
The tree had started as a small sapling in an open paddock but now, almost 24 years later, it was a sizeable tree in a dense forest.
“So I can testify that he is good compost, and that’s exactly what he wanted. He wrote that he was looking forward to becoming humus in the Garden of the Happy Dead,” Smart said.
“That was his ultimate dream. He really has returned to nature and made his final contribution to our better future.”
The restoration project has been funded by the Hundertwasser Foundation and the Lottery Grants Board, with contributions from other organisations and fundraising efforts that include a Givealittle page.
As well as paid tours starting from Kawakawa, Living Hundertwasser is planning monthly free tours for school groups.
