Violence against defenseless human beings and children in particular is one of the central themes of Gottfried Helnwein’s artistic production.
This autumn in Vienna his installation “My sister”, depicting a little girl with a bloody face, covered two facades of the high Ringturm skyscraper, visible at 360° in the skyline of the Austrian capital: a warning in the context of a campaign against violence, promoted by the insurance company that has its headquarters in the building.
A similar subject from the same series of works had already occupied the south tower of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the last part of 2022, in collaboration with the parish of the most important church in Vienna. But it is from his beginnings that the Viennese artist’s attention has been directed towards suffering: “Violence against those who cannot defend themselves runs through the history of humanity and is above all male and above all against women and children. It’s something I don’t understand. I saw forensic photos that have never left me. Vulnerability, particularly of children, is simply the theme that brought me to art,” Helnwein tells us, whom the Albertina is honoring with an exhibition designed for his 75th birthday.

Vienna

He, who grew up in the years of extreme poverty at the start of the Second World War in a Vienna that had been silent about Nazi crimes for too long, chose the medium of painting to create disturbing scenes, in which sinister male figures, sometimes in SS uniforms, surround small creatures with eyes closed to the world. Shocking nightmares that also open up to the comic book universe: Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, but also Japanese manga. Worlds that should be safe refuges for the imagination, but which Helnwein contrasts with historical figures such as Hitler or with scenes of war and catastrophes of our time.

Mute and eloquent juxtapositions

Mute yet eloquent juxtapositions: “They are all actors in the human drama and painting offers me the possibility of bringing them together”, he tells us again.

The Albertina exhibition, in whose creation Helnwein actively collaborated, is a cross-section of the production of the last twenty years, with powerful hyper-realistic paintings with explosive expressiveness. Suffering faces and people that just emerge from the darkness of backgrounds that seem to want to swallow them, and a sense of inevitability that pervades the multi-character depictions: “My paintings capture moments, but it’s up to the observer to complete them with a before and an after. In almost half a century I have seen very strong emotional reactions in front of my canvases. An image can say much more than words.”