Artistic Protest

These are two cards supporting anti-nuclear causes using the work of Austrian artist-architect-environmentalist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. I first came across Hundertwasser when I was a student in Vienna in 1974, the year of a major retrospective of his work at the Albertina Museum. His philosophy can probably be summed up in this quote: "Paradise is there, but we destroy it."

The first card shows a poster donated by Hundertwasser to Ralph Nader's Critical Mass Energy Project in Washington in 1980.

The poster itself is based on a silkscreen created by Hundertwasser about a decade earlier: Irinaland over the Balkans with Bulgarian actress Irina Maleeva as the subject. Hundertwasser visited Washington in 1980 and in his honor Mayor Marion Barry, Jr., proclaimed  "Hundertwasser Day" which was marked by planting of the first 12 of 100 trees in Judiciary Square.

The poster was also used in other anti-nuclear campaigns, with sales proceeds going to the citizen action groups. The version below was for the benefit of the Initiative östereichische Atomkraftwerkgegner (Initiative of Austrian Opponents of Atomic Power Plants):

The post card's legend translates as "Atomic Final Solution - No, No, No, No."

Hundertwasser died in 2000 at age 72 while on the Queen Elizabeth 2.