Hundertwasser

Hundertwasser criticised that stamps were becoming more and more ugly. In 1974 he approached the responsible minister with the idea that once a year there should be an issue of stamps designed by Austrian artists. The Austrian postal service began the series "Modern Art from Austria" with Hundertwasser's "Spiral Tree" (Date of first issue: December 11, 1975).

Until 2008 appeared 34 postage stamps by Austrian artists in this series. Hundertwasser and Walter Koschatzky chose the artists on behalf of the Austrian Post until their dead, Hundertwasser additionally supervised the collaborations between the artists involved and the engraver, Wolfgang Seidel.

Hundertwasser collected postage stamps as a child, and they were for him a window on to the world and a signpost towards painting.

In 1943 he wrote in his poem "The Secret of the Postage Stamp"
But if you're an outsider reading these lines
And if you miss joy because something is eating into your life,
Believe my and other collectors' advice, what is best:
Watch nature, do sports or become a philatelist!

His enthusiasm for stamps remained with him his whole life long. He put great importance to the fact that when he had to send a letter or a card, he would always use particularly beautiful stamps. For important post he stuck on several stamps so the appearance of the envelope would be particularly colourful and varied. For him stamps were ambassadors of a country and its culture, its landscape and uniqueness.

Hundertwasser on postage stamps in 1979:

I have loved postage stamps long before I became a painter. It was a big joy to collect these little coloured pictures, to separate them from the letters which came from far away (…) The stamps and those who made them were for me the real ambassadors of this earth, the real representatives of the world parliament. The small pictures I can carry with me in small books. They are like venerable objects, like icons.