475A Rain of Blood Is Falling Into the Garden 1972

Friedensreich Hundertwasser made *475A Rain of Blood Is Falling Into the Garden*, using, it seems, watercolour or gouache. Look how the marks build and swirl, like a storm but also like something blooming from the centre. The texture is smooth, those runny pools of colour. It’s like a stain, or some kind of organic bloom. Red and blue dominate. This is a painting that makes a virtue of seeming slightly out of control, like the artist let the paint go where it wanted. Look at those little red teardrops that form a rain in the title. There's a kind of raw energy that makes me think of some early work by Joan Miró. And like Miró, Hundertwasser isn’t afraid of a kind of clumsy beauty, of letting the painting be what it is. It’s more of a beginning than an end.