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Friedensreich Hundertwasser, born Friedrich Stowasser on 12-15-1928 in Austria, was an artist, painter, sculptor, performer, and architect who both created and expressed himself with boldly colored pictorial organic forms and spirals. He is known for his unconventioanl architectural facades, buildings with wavy floors, clothing, postage stamp, flag and poster design.
The Friedensreich Hundertwasser name loosely translates as "Peace-Realm Hundred-Water", an expression of his environmental and life philosphy (Friedrich means peace, reich=realm, hundert is hundred and wasser is water). He saw humanity as being a  “guest of nature who needs to behave,” and every person being able to “...lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach....take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach...visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardised man who lives next door.”
Hundertwasser attended a Montessori school, collected pebbles and pressed flowers as a child. All of his mother's relatives died in the Holocaust. Hundertwasser chose New Zealand as his home and was buried there after his death at sea 2-19-2000.
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