1977 Helnwein travels through the United States for several months.

More pen-and-ink drawings.
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1976 Aktion "Allzeit Bereit" (Ever Ready) at the Naschmarkt, Vienna.
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1975 -1985 Helnwein works on a series of pen-and-ink drawings.
"Unser Entenbischof" (Our Duck-Bishop),
"Zwei amerikanische Ärzte behelligen eine Patientin" (Two American Doctors teasing a Patient),
"Mulattin Erika in ihrem Haus" (Mulato-girl Erika in her House),"Das Wannenwunder von Watras" (The Bathtub Wonder of Watras),
"Metallippe zum Lächeln" (Metal Lip for Smiling),
"Das Grubenunglück" (Mine Disaster),
"Korrekturspange" (Corrective Brace),
"Assistent Assmann" (Assistant Assmann),
"Hilfe für Mann ohne Kinn" (Help for Man with no Chin). ...

1974 Theodor Körner Prize.

ZDF (German national TV) film portrait "Helnweins Sehtest" (Helnwein's Eye Test), directed by Heinz Dieckmann.
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"Weisse Kinder" (White Children) Aktion with 15 bandaged children in Kärntnerstrasse, in the centre of Vienna.
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1973 First edition of an etching "Meine Buben haben einen Türken in die Schlucht gestossen" (My Little Rascals Have Shoved a Turk into the Ravine).

Aktion "Sandra" at Gallery over the Stubenbastei, Vienna.

First cover for the political and cultural magazine "Profil".
"Suicide in Austria" (Selbstmord in Österreich), showing a little girl slashing her wrists. - many readers are outraged and cancel their subscriptions. ...

1972 .
A Helnwein exhibition in the Gallery of the "House of the Press" in Vienna, headquarters of Austrias biggest newspapers, is discontinued after three days because of strong protests by visitors and employees and finally strike threats by the workers council ...

Works on a series of pen and ink, crayon and pencil drawings.

Scratches and scrapes a series of self-portraits and child-photos with luminous stigma.

1971 Kardinal König Prize.

In the exhibition "Zoetus" at the Kunsthalle "Künstlerhaus" in Vienna unidentified people put stickers with the words "Entartete Kunst" (degenerate art) on Helnwein's paintings.

At the opening of an exhibition at Galerie D in Mödling, near Vienna, the mayor has Helnwein's paintings confiscated by the police.
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First performances ("Aktions") with children. At first in his studio and later in the streets of Vienna.
In his essay "The Divided Self", art-historian Peter Gorsen states: "As shown by his many actions with children in public, the group portrait with children has become a permanent subject for Helnwein. His commitment to the rights of children has nothing to do with "infantomania", as manifested in a socially isolated "children's culture", in a commercialized "children's media", in the child as a pedagogical subject, and in the ideological transfiguration of one's own childhood.

Helnwein must also be set apart from Viennese Actionism as he does not reduce the child's body to mere aesthetic material (as in the "material actions" of Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, and Otto Muehl), but instead endows it with a symbolic function in representing defenceless, sacrificed man. The sexualistic concept of the child in (Freud-influenced) "Viennese Actionism" is countered by the moralist and utopian Helnwein with the child as a sexless salvation figure. The tendency to a patriarchal transfiguration and idealization of an innocent, sacrificing child-man embracing children and artists as the sole creative interest group is the main feature distinguishing Helnwein's world of pictures from the pan-sexualism and libido anarchy of the Vienna action group of old." ...

1970 Prize of the Academy for Fine Art, Vienna (Meisterschul-Preis).

First photographic self-portraits with bandages and surgical instruments.
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1969 to 1973 Helnwein studies painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
It is the same University where in 1907 and 1908, a young struggling artist by the name of Adolf Hitler was twice denied admission for art studies. ...