Of course, the ship would probably be better suited to Venice. After all, Venice is actually a departure from the land, a stopover on the way to the water." This is what the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) said about the city with its lagoons. It is an island outside the mainland, so to speak, a place where the journey has already begun.
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And his ship, the "Regentag", is not entirely at sea either. Of course, the "Regentag" once crossed the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Pacific to New Zealand. But for Hundertwasser, she is also a writing hut and retreat in front of his estate. She ran aground there once, so she was also looking for land there. And the ship went dry so often that it looks more like an amphibian than a boat. Today, however, the two-master is moored in the waters of the Danube in Tulln, Austria, but is very much tied to land. This is because the ship cannot travel more than two kilometres in either direction with its masts up. We wanted to visit it in 2018.
At the time, Andrea Fürst, archivist at the Hundertwasser Foundation in Vienna, wrote to us that the ship would probably have to go to the shipyard first. She has been looking after Hundertwasser's artistic legacy since 1992: original works, graphic objects, personal documents of his life, evidence of his activities. There are also 17 stamp issues designed by Hundertwasser - and a Hundertwasser ship, the "Regentag". When the ship is in good shape again, she wrote, you are welcome to come. However, the work will probably not be completed until spring 2019.
Restoration of a monument
What a fallacy. Sixty-one emails followed over the years. Almost every one reported on new tasks for the boat builder commissioned by the foundation. Tobias van Kooij is that boat builder. However, he only learnt to love the "Regentag" while he was working on it. On his first visit in 2018, he found the ship to be a lacklustre relic. The condition was critical, and although municipal workers put a submersible pump in the bilge every few months, it was not enough. On board, van Kooij found a sponge in the wet room, mould in the rooms and his toolbox, which had crashed through the deck.
He began the painstaking restoration work. But the ship had been classified as a monument for three years, a burden. Because the "Regentag" is far more a work of art than a ship. Hundertwasser had the former freighter located by his secretary in 1967. Previously, the ship, built in 1910, transported salt on routes between Tunisia and Sicily.
Immediately after the purchase, the ship spent five years in seven shipyards in the Mediterranean, in Palermo, Pellestrina, Portegrandi Malcontenta, Portoferrairo, La Goulette and Malta. It is unclear why there were so many changes, but the result is known: Since 1974, the ship has been 16.60 metres long instead of the previous 12 metres. The shipbuilders gave the hull a new bow and stern section as well as lengthening it. An asymmetrical cabin broke with the yachting zeitgeist of the 60s and 70s, and he also mixed round and square windows. Hundertwasser gave his ship the number 703 in his consecutive catalogue raisonné.
Artists' life at sea
By comparison, even Bernard Moitessier's legendary and comparatively coarse "Joshua" looks like a racehorse next to the "Regentag" - the "Regentag" is even rougher, more massive and certainly more sedate. Hardly anything is known about the sailing characteristics of the estimated 35 tonne monument. The destinations of the subsequent Mediterranean test voyages are documented, including Malta, Elba, Cyprus and even Israel. Painter friends and companions were on board, and historical photos show an artist's life at sea. In 1956 Hundertwasser was still completely unknown; he travelled to Sweden at the invitation of a friend, but even there nobody wanted to buy or exhibit his paintings. Eventually he became a sailor on the SS "Bauta", almost ten years later he noted: "I held the helm twice a day for two hours each time and tore up the ship terribly on the first day. Then I got better and better." In the end, he received the certificate for being a "good sailor".
It is documented that New Zealand was the place of Hundertwasser's longing, but apparently not why he himself was not on board the "Regentag" for most of its journey across the Atlantic from 1975 onwards. He was at the helm in the Caribbean, friends then steered the ship through the Pacific to New Zealand without him, where the "Regentag" dropped anchor in 1976. Hundertwasser bought land in New Zealand and the "Regentag" became his study, his country residence in the water, his ship's hermitage off the shore.
Hundertwasser in the sailing world
There are two more episodes in which Hundertwasser got in touch with the sailing world in those years, literally, it was about sailcloth. In 1989, the boot trade fair was held in Düsseldorf for the twentieth time and Austria was the partner country. To mark the occasion, Friedensreich Hundertwasser designed colourful sails, of which posters were created. One of the designs was realised. The proceeds from the auctioned sails went to the World Wildlife Fund for a Wadden Sea National Park House in Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea coast.
And then there was the spinnaker design for the Austrian women's team in 1995 on the Mumm 36 "Vienna", which took part in the offshore classic Fastnet Race. The crew was the first women's crew to finish the prestigious race. Light followed shadow: In the same year, a fax message from Hundertwasser arrived at his friend in Austria, Andrea Fürst also archived it. "Dear Joram, I have some bad news," wrote Hundertwasser at the time. "The 'Regentag' sank tonight. Only the masts are still sticking out of the water."
The artist was dejected, but in the evening he drew a sketch and sent it through the device: "This is what 'Regentag' looks like at low tide." You can see a hull tilted aft under water. The rig partially protrudes over the water with the masts at a huge angle. "At high tide, you can no longer see the bowsprit," adds Hundertwasser, and that the ship will be lifted with straps the next day.
The cause of the mishap was a hose that had fallen over and caused the ship to fill up when the sea valve was open. Hundertwasser had previously unceremoniously cut off a blocked sink drain that was supposed to lead into the sea. From then on, he let the waste water run into a bucket. But at some point, the remaining end of the hose was kinked and the ship filled up via the open end of the hose, which was now below the water level.
After the lift, Hundertwasser commissioned shipyard work in 1999 and a company in the Bay of Islands encased the hull in ferrocement. The legendary water pass made of irregularly glued tiles must also have been one of his ideas. But Hundertwasser did not live to see its completion.
Return of the Hundertwasser ship to Europe
In 2004, the "Regentag" came to Tulln, where Austria's boat show takes place. Someone wanted something: Willi Stift, a sailing-enthusiastic entrepreneur and mayor at the time, had the idea of bringing the ship from New Zealand for an exhibition called "Art - Man - Nature". Andrea Fürst explains that transporting a work of art of this size halfway around the world was unbelievable. It is not known who paid for the expensive, logistically and technically complex transport on a container ship to Hamburg.
The transport from Hamburg over land was certainly adventurous: a haulage company cut off the wheelhouse without further ado to get under bridges - with considerable damage to the superstructure. In 2014, another harbour dredger rammed into the ship and it went ashore again. But apparently the real damage is not so obviously known.
"I was actually only supposed to paint the 'Regentag'," recalls boatbuilder van Kooij of his first steps at the start of the refit in 2018. But when sanding it down, it turned out that the wood was rotten and in some places completely wet. From this point on, years passed with the breaking out of rotten deck beams and hull refurbishment before he was finally able to paint.
It wouldn't have taken much for the ship to sink again at its berth in Tulln, a few kilometres up the Danube from Vienna. Water had worked its way between the wood and the epoxy that was actually intended to protect it. The Rott ate its way through the space in between all the faster. In September 2021, three years after work began, the restoration is still not complete. Van Kooij, who previously specialised in modern yachts, has now thrown himself into the project. "If I had known what I was in for, I would have turned it down," he says today. One year later, in 2022, the "Regentag" has at least been restored above the waterline. But underneath, it became apparent that the ferrocement from New Zealand was damaged. The concrete laminate intended as protection was too thin. The lower hull of the ship was also as damp as a bog. To finance the refurbishment, the foundation auctioned off ninety Hundertwasser graphics and artefacts in 2023. The refit cost half a million euros in total, 520,000 euros. The wooden hull on the inside has been given new frames and planks, and van Kooij has now laminated a GRP hull over the ferrocement on the outside, which was itself intended to protect the wooden planks. The ship is now presentable again and, above all, watertight.
"Water permeates his work"
Today, Andrea Fürst is sitting on the bench where Hundertwasser once sat enthroned, leaning against the bulkhead of his bunk and talking about the water in the artist's life's work, but also about the water in the planks and frames. "Water pervades his work," she says. Even as a six-year-old, he moulded a steamboat out of sand - catalogue raisonné number 2.
Hundertwasser loved rainy days, she says, "The colours shine more intensely then. A rainy day is a better day for painting." The moment of dripping also has to do with the painting technique. When the painter drips colour onto the canvas, the result is a perfect form, a stain that is as natural as if a raindrop had fallen onto the picture.
The archivist recalls a scene in the video "Hundertwasser's Rainy Day" (only the trailer is still available on YouTube), in which the ship can often be seen travelling. At one point, Hundertwasser lies on his stomach on the ice and listens to a stream gurgling below. "Water is a fantastic element," says Hundertwasser in this avant-garde film, which is itself a work of art, "it holds infinite possibilities." Today we live in chaos, Hundertwasser mocks high-rise buildings and curses the "chaos of the straight line". The ruler is the symbol of near illiteracy.
Hundertwasser was married to two women and divorced twice. He had a daughter with a third, without marrying. It was mainly his girlfriends who were on board. I can't do without beautiful women, said Hundertwasser, women are muses for me, as they say. My relationship with women is not ideal and cannot be imitated - his words.
Now the ship is presentable again, with a new engine ready to cast off, the original sails are ready in the forepeak. On the morning of the third day in Tulln, land rain dribbles onto the wheelhouse. One last look at the bow, the smell of tar from the cabin in my nose, one last time I ram my head into the low door frame. A good day from Friedensreich Hundertwasser's point of view.
Technical data "Rainy day"
- Length (before extension): (11,90) 16,60 m
- Width: 4,45 m
- Depth: 1,17 m
- Displacement: 12,3 t
- Year of construction: 1910 as "San Giuseppe T", acquired in Palermo
- Conversions/extension: 1967-1974
- Downfall: 1995
- Ferrocement coating: 1999-2000
- Return to Europe: 2004
- Restoration: 2018-2024
About Friedensreich Hundertwasser
Friedensreich Hundertwasser Rainy Day Dark Colouredborn Friedrich Stowasser, was born in Berlin in 1928. The son of Elsa and the engineer Ernst Stowasser, at the age of seven he attended the Montessori school in Vienna, which was regarded as experimental, where the art teachers there already gave him an "extraordinary sense of form and colour". Hundertwasser developed into a non-conformist, an opponent of all standardisation and straight lines. Vitality and individuality were to characterise his work. The internationally active and successful artist, environmental activist and lateral thinker died of heart failure on the "Queen Elizabeth 2" during the return journey from New Zealand to Europe in 2000.
Nils Theurer
Freier Mitarbeiter, Südkorrespondent
