Hundertwasser's comment on the work

LIKE ENTRANCE MONEY INTO PARADISECopper, silver and gold are at least as noble as lapislazuli, ultramarine, linen, linseed-oil, polivinyl acetate, paper, eggs and grinded bricks.I designed the coins in the size of a soup plate; then the modeller forms it into plaster, and I continue to shape it until it is ready to be reduced to coin size. So the coins are not copies of my paintings. (...)My coins have no face and revers as usual but only a front side. On the revers there are embossed seals, stamps representing the hall-mark, the modeller's sign, the seal of the Austrian Mint, the editor's sign and the copyright sign, the year, the title and number of the work, the running edition number and my signature in gothic letters and in Japanese.Furthermore, the coins are not round but have irregular edges. The metal will be denaturated. The silver will be blackened with sulphur and will not look like new silver anymore. The copper will be darkened or greened by means of acid to get a verdigris aspect like the old Roman coins.The result is extraordinary. It is like things hundred or thousand years old, mysterious like ancient engravings, like very old rediscovered treasures.If you hold such a heavy peace of metal in your hand with all its light and shadow effects and the black and verdigris in the depths, you feel as if you walked into a wonderland.The plastic forms create a new dimension. The unreal of my shapes and forms becomes real to touch and feel even for the blind. Therefore, it becomes twice unreal because such shapes and forms must not be and can not be real. Otherwise we would already be in paradise. (...)(from: Hundertwasser Coin catalogue, Gruener Janura AG, Glarus, 1978, pp. 3-6)