Description
This description was automatically translated from German. If you have any questions about this piece of jewellery, we will be happy to help!
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You can read Hundertwasser's own thoughts on this work in this text, which he wrote on the occasion of the designs for coins in 1978:
Copper, silver, gold are at least as luxurious as ultramarine, linen, polivinylacetate glue, linseed oil, eggs and crushed bricks. I design the coins personally and continue to work on the plaster mold myself after the modeler has pre-designed the mold in plate size. So they are not copies of pictures. When I was asked to design coins, I was very, very skeptical and almost against it. But that's always the case when I'm offered a new material to work with, be it copper engraving, litho, tapestry, silk screen or glass. But then, when I had the first results in plate size in plaster, then in coin size in my hand, I was more and more enthusiastic. Now I always carry the first coins around with me in my bag as little works of art that I show everyone.
They are not coins in the usual sense, because they are not a means of payment. But maybe people can pay with my coins after all? That would be wonderful. The coins have no heads or eagles, so they only have an obverse. On the back there are only hallmarks of the fineness, the modeller's mark, the year, the Austrian Mint mark, the publisher's mark, the copyright mark, the title and oeuvre number, a consecutive edition number and my signature in Kurrent script and in Japanese. In addition, the coins are not round, but have an irregular edge. And the metal is denatured. Silver turns black and doesn't look like silver. Copper becomes dark or verdigris green and looks like old Roman coins. In general, the result is astonishing, like works from the last century or millennium, and as mysterious as old engravings, like old, rediscovered treasures.
When you hold such a piece of metal so heavily in your hand, with its effects of light and shadow and the blackening and greening in the depths, you feel as if you are stepping into a wonderland. The plasticity creates a new dimension. The unreal of my world of forms becomes real, palpable, tangible, even for the blind, and therefore doubly unreal, because such forms must not exist in reality, cannot exist on earth, or we would already be in paradise. It is really incredible to carry such a picture in your trouser pocket without it wearing out and getting better and better. Every now and then you feel for it, pull it out of your pocket or purse and look at it, wet in the pouring rain or in the bath under water, in a glass of water or in the sun, or it flashes when you turn it back and forth in candlelight.
And at night, you can feel the shapes with your fingers. In bed at night under the covers, when you're lonely or when you're sick in a hospital bed between sterile walls, or when you're dying alone, I think it's nice to have something like this in your hands. You can warm yourself like a hot stone. Or cool it like a snow crystal or a piece of blue ice. You can put it in the fire or in water. All my worlds are represented here, concentrated and shadowy at the same time, like a rebirth, a resurrection in a new dimension.
It's like an entrance fee to paradise.
Published in:
Schurian, Walter (ed.): Hundertwasser - Schöne Wege, Gedanken über Kunst und Leben. Munich 1983, pp. 80-82
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