NZ Jewish community: a David facing a Goliath of hostility

In the city of Whangarei, 160 km north of Auckland, stands an extraordinary building: an arresting modernist construction of towers and spires, curvaceous walls and exuberant colours.

It’s the Hundertwasser Museum of Art conceived by Viennese-born Jewish architect and painter Friedrich Stowasser, better known by his pseudonym Hundertwasser). 

 The interior is no less entrancing with Gaudi-inspired spaces, windows that invite the trees inside, even toilet facilities that astound with their winding entrance and polychromatic displays.  That’s without even mentioning the artwork:  live and lithe richly colourful paintings of this unusual and eccentric artist.

Hundertwasser escaped the Nazis but most of his extended family did not. The loss would surely have scarred his sensitive soul but there is no direct evidence of this in the museum. Looking closely at a series of black and white drawings, I found them eerily Shoah -like in their depiction of ghastly crematoria type towers of grey smoke. But his work is typically vivid, a defiant protest against a world which tries to extinguish the light.

There is only one work which directly references his Jewish connections. It’s entitled Among Trees You Are at Home and the inscription below proclaims it was created for the JNF and donated to promote the afforestation of the Negev Desert. 

Perhaps before October 7, I wouldn’t have been as excited as I was by this poster but in the context of a country currently awash in Israelophobia, it was delightful to find a revered artist whose Jewishness was boldly evident for all visitors to the museum.

Hundertwasser was not a traditional Jew, but he drew inspiration from the Judaism of his ancestors and cared enough about Israel to donate this painting for the greening of the Negev.