ARTISTHelnwein

Gottfried Helnwein’s paintings of children are both touching and disturbing. The hyperrealistic character of his images serves to intensify this effect still further. The vulnerable and defenseless child serves as the central motif in his examination of the themes of pain, injury, and violence.

Salzkammergut Festwochen 2024

Erste museale Werkschau von Gottfried Helnwein in Österreich seit 1985. Der österreichische Künstler hat seit Mitte der 1980er Jahre zunächst in Deutschland gelebt hat und ist heute in Los Angeles und Irland ansässig. Die Ausstellung im grossen Saal des Museums zeigt Werke aus allen Schaffensperioden seit den frühen 1970er Jahren. Dabei steht das Thema des menschlichen Gesichts im Mittelpunkt, mit dem Helnwein sich in mehr als drei Jahrzehnten künstlerischer Arbeit auseinander gesetzt hat.

" Es ist kein Zufall, dass unter all den grossen Retrospektiven, die wir (in der Albertina) gezeigt haben, von Gerhard Richter bis Georg Baselitz, diese Ausstellung von Gottfried Helnwein mit Abstand die am meisten die Menschen bewegende Ausstellung war, die die Menschen zum Teil zu Tränen gerührt hat. Ich habe es fast nicht glauben können. Aber Gottfried Helnwein trifft die Menschen ins Mark, er bewegt die Herzen. Und es freut mich natürlich, wenn man zeigen kann, dass Kunst nicht L’art pour l’art sein muss, sondern eine Botschaft haben kann, die die Menschen betrifft und berührt. " Klaus Albrecht Schröder Direktor, Albertina Museum Wien

Susan Crowley, Carmen Gaitán Rojo, Luis Alberto Ayala Blanco, Nicolás Alvarado, Marco Antonio Silva Barón

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Gottfried Helnwein konzipierte und organisierte die erste Musumsausstellung des künstlerischen Werkes von Carl Barks. Von 1994 bis 1997 wurde die Retrospektive in zehn europäischen Museen gezeigt und von über 700 000 Menschen gesehen. - 2007 stellt er die Ausstellung für das Karikaturmuseum Krems neu zusammen, die nun das erste mal in Österreich gezeigt wird.

Exhibition Catalogue

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One man show Exhibition catalogue

"...When I look at a work of Art I ask myself: does it challenge me, does it touch, move or inspire me? Do I learn something from it, does it startle or amaze me - do I get excited, upset? That is the test any artwork has to pass: can it create an emotional impact on a human being even when he has no education or any information about art? I’ve always had a problem with art that you can only understand if you have a degree in art history, and I have a problem with theories in general. Most of them are bullshit anyway. Most critics and theorists have little respect for artists, and I think the importance of theory in art is totally overrated. Real art is self-evident. Real art is intense, challenging, enchanting, exciting and unsettling; it has a quality and magic that you cannot explain. Like the Blues, a poem of Rimbaud or Rembrandt's late self-portraits. Art is not logic, and if you really want to experience it, your mind and rational thinking will be of little help. Art is something spiritual that you can only experience with your senses, your heart, your soul. Think of Bob Dylan, Hendrix, Mozart, Howling Wolf, Goya, Bukowski or Robert Crumb - do you need to know the theories that some busybodies might attach to their art in order to experience it? Marcel Duchamp said: "The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from the bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity." These two poles is all you need.

exhibition-cataogue ..A clarity of vision in his subject matter was emerging in Helnwein's art that was to stay consistent throughout his career. His subject matter was the human condition. The metaphor for his art, although it included self-portraits, was dominated by the image of the child, but not the carefree innocent child of popular imagination. Helnwein instead created the profoundly disturbing yet compellingly provocative image of the wounded child. The child scarred physically and the child scarred emotionally from within.

"Helnwein's meticulous Irish landscapes, which are the cornerstone of this Crawford show, are unashamedly aesthetic: gorgeous confections of pure, delicious spectacle. The typically epic but not inhuman scale imitates the subject matter. The tonal realism will make people go "Wow, are they paintings?" - thanks to the photorealist finish which seems free of the foibles of the human hand. Helnwein works with very small brushes - highlighting and subtly magnifying here, muting colours or creating shadows there; pushing some paintings towards momentary sleights of impressionism; and others towards seamless, burnished hyperreality. The bird's eye view suggests a kind of superhuman vision which can simultaneously take in the entire view with breath-taking clarity, like some bionic eagle." Mic Moroney, from the essay "Out of the Apocalypse into the Sublime - bursting into Irish Landscape: Citizen Helnwein"

On Sunday, November 9, at 7:00 p.m. the Museum of Tolerance commemorates the 65th anniversary of the infamous 1938 Nazi “Night of Broken Glass” (Kristallnacht) pogrom which targeted 1,000 synagogues in Germany and Austria and marked the beginning of the end of European Jewry. The commemoration is highlighted by the screening of a documentary by renowned Austrian artist, Gottfried Helnwein, 9th November Night, who has committed himself and his art to reminding the world of the Holocaust. The documentary is based upon his 1988 exhibit of seventeen children’s portraits that were displayed in commemoration of Kristallnacht in Cologne, Germany. Just days into the exhibit, these portraits were vandalized.. “The fury with which the neo-nazis reacted to these portraits is understandable inasmuch as it is the very same fury with which they have for years been fighting against The Diary of Anne Frank,” said famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. “The murder of children rouses abhorrence and conflict in every human, whether they are motivated by ideology or insanity. The urge to destroy has survived; the portraits bear witness to its rage.”

catalogue essay by Wolfgang Bauer

Monograph texts by Alexander Borovsky, Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art Peter Selz Klaus Honnef William Burroughs Heiner Müller

catalogue text by Chikako Imai text by Evgenija Nicolaevna Petrova Chief Curator, State Russian Museum St Petersburg Alexander Borovsky, Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art,State Russian Museum, St Petersburg Günter Zehnder,Chief Curator, Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn text by Andreas Mäckler.

catalogue text by Gisela Fiedler-Bender and Georg Dolezal.

hardcover text by William S. Burroughs, Heiner Müller and Reinhold Mißelbeck.

catalogue text by Peter Zawrel, Peter Gorsen and William S. Burroughs.

Gottfried Helnwein (works on paper 1969–1989), Folkwang Museum Essen/Kunsthalle Bremen/ Kunstverein Ludwigsburg, 1989, text by Hubertus Froning, H.C. Artmann and Heiner Müller.

“Helnwein” ‘Ninth November Night’”, Ludwig Museum - Cologne/Musée de l’Elysée - Lausanne 1988, text by Reinhold Mißelbeck, Simon Wiesenthal, Charles-Henri Favrod and Heiner Müller.

Einzelausstellung, Musée d’Art Moderne, Strasbourg texts by Peter Gorsen and Heiner Müller.

one-man show and Performance

exhibition-catalogue Mittelrhein Museum, Koblenz Leopold Hoesch Museum, Düren Galerie Würthle, Wien,

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one-man show Ausstellungskatalog

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