398 The Mosque 1959

Friedensreich Hundertwasser seems to have made this painting, called "The Mosque", with watercolors and crayon, or something similar, and with a kind of naive-ish, playful spirit. The colors are really doing it for me, with this strange but pleasant combination of greens, reds and blues. They are laid down flatly but with a looseness. It's like he just let the medium do its thing, allowing for drips and bleeds. My eye keeps getting pulled to the heavy, dark line that cuts horizontally across the bottom section, and I am thinking about the way it almost holds the rest of the composition up. There's also a real sense of depth despite the flatness of the colors. I wonder if Hundertwasser looked at Paul Klee's work and thought about how line and color can build a whole world. It's all about that conversation between artists through time, taking and giving, borrowing and inventing.