Transautomatism

aesthetic style 1954-present Austria

Transautomatism is the theory of art developed by the Austrian painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who set it down in 1954 and built his practice around it for the rest of his life. The name deliberately echoes the Surrealists' automatism, but shifts its centre of gravity: where automatism serves the artist's unconscious, transautomatism focuses on the experience of the viewer rather than the artist. A picture is not planned and executed but allowed to grow organically, without a predetermined whole, so that the finished surface reads as something living - layered, spiralling, and open-ended - that each beholder completes for themselves. The theory underwrites everything Hundertwasser is known for: brilliant colour, organic and spiral form, and his lifelong war on the straight line, which he called 'godless and immoral'.

See filename. Size of the piece of cloth is 90×90 cm.
See filename. Size of the piece of cloth is 90×90 cm.CC BY-SA 3.0 (credit: Friedensreich Hundertwasser (design), uploader (photograph).) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Organic, unplanned growth: compositions develop without a predetermined design
  • Spiral and concentric structures echoing growth rings and unfurling plant forms
  • Vivid, layered colour applied in strata, like sediment or living tissue
  • Rejection of the straight line and standardised geometry
  • Dense decorative patterning that rewards prolonged looking
  • Open-ended imagery completed in the viewer's imagination rather than by an explanatory subject

Key figures

  • Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) — Austrian artist who coined transautomatism in 1954 and made it the basis of his painting, architecture, and design

Example works

  • Kaaba-Penis, die halbe Insel — Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1959)
  • Kingdom of the Toro series — Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1967)

Sources

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