paul klee: burg und sonne

Paul Klee was born in Switzerland in 1879. He trained as a painter in the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. His father was a German music teacher and his mother a Swiss opera singer. Although he was trained musically and played the violin well he rebelled against his parents' wishes and decided to study fine art in Germany.

His style of painting was very distinctive. He liked to turn objects into simple geometric shapes when he painted them. As you can see, the above painting is made up of diamonds, squares, rectangles, triangles and one circle.

Klee's use of colour and shape makes his works very striking. I find the painting above Burg und Sonne (Fortress and Sun) quite compelling to look at.

willy puchners farbenlehre

The Austrian artist and illustrator of children's books always has his paints at hand on his travels round the world. You can see more of his fascinating creations on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung website.

Rügen

Rügen is Germany's largest island. It lies in the Baltic Sea near the northeastern province of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The island has been popular with visitors since bathing became fashionable in the nineteenth century.

Painter Caspar David Friedrich's picture Kreidefelsen auf Rügen made the chalky white cliffs on the island famous and today there are numerous seaside resorts around the island. The cliffs at Rügen are as high as 161 metres above sea level (about as high as the Blackpool Tower) and you can follow a clifftop coastal path to enjoy wonderful sea views and enjoy some delicious German fare in the Waldhalle Gaststätte.

Weiße Felsen auf Rügen

Caspar David Friedrich's painting: Kreidefelsen auf Rügen

Gasthaus Waldhalle

Hundertwasser Haus

The Hundertwasser House in Vienna is such an interesting building I really want to tell you more about it. Visually it is unlike any other building and the reasons behind its quirkiness lie with its chief creator Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Hundertwasser believed that most buildings suffered from a sickness and it was his dream to create buildings that were vibrant and in harmony with nature. So he designed Hundertwasser House.

The house is an apartment house. This means it is divided up into small Wohnungen or flats and there are many residents living in it. The building is fascinating with its use of bright colour and unusual curves. The colourful mosaics, crooked walls, small balconies and roof terraces overgrown with trees all give the building its extraordinary look. It is one of the most visited buildings in Austria.

Each dwelling within the house is made individual by its own colour on the outside wall and by its own distinct type of window. The corridors inside the house have uneven floors and undulating roughcast walls made of materials that are easy to renew. The roofline of the building is ornamented with large onion domes and trees that rise up out of terraced gardens on the roof. And if you manage to look closely at the outside walls you might spot the flamboyant silver ceramic tiles used to decorate around some of the windows.

Watercolour of Hundertwasser House

If you are lucky enough to get the chance to visit the Hundertwasser House at 43 Löwengasse  in Vienna then you will have to make do with looking at the building from the outside, as it is a private, residential home. But there is a cafe on the ground floor of the building where you can soak up the atmosphere over Kaffee und Kuchen.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser

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