The child has grown into a world famous artist. But he has carried his questions with him. Today opens a large retrospective exhibition of Helnwein's art in Waino Aaltonen Museum of Art in Turku. The exhibition contains aquarels, oil paintings, drawings and photographs. They have often caused controversies by dealing with subjects that are all too sensitive. ...

The exhibition in the WA Museum of Art by the Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein does not make you happy, but it does feel good - in a masochistic way. With his works Helnwein proves that under a sophisticated facade this world is a wretched place to live in. In an interview he says: "I know that individuals are poorly treated on this planet. They are being harmed and subdued. And all this is covered by optimistic propaganda. Far before I began painting I felt that humanity was in a dire state. The pain reaches out to everyone, even though it is rarely spoken of. Nonetheless everyone wants to overcome the pain, to transcend it." ...

Gottfried Helnwein- Retrospective in the State Russian Museum, St Petersburg ...

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The Gottfried Helnwein seen on the poster advertising his show and the Gottfried Helnwein viewed in person seem to be a study in contradictions. With his head bandaged and eyes literally pierced by two forks, the poster Helnwein shatters glass with his seemingly torturous cries. In person, Helnwein's taut skin is unblemished; his personality, approachable and warm. But as he begins to talk, it becomes clear that he is indeed the creator of the madman. ...

Cover: "Kindskopf" ("Head of a Child"), photography by Gottfried Helnwein
He increasingly used photography, a medium that had accompanied his artistic work from the beginning. Initially employed for documentary purposes, it developed dynamics of its own. While in his paintings, Helnwein showed an unparalleled photographic sophistication to render his artistic concepts as realistically as possible, his photographic works used often minuscle changes in light and camera setting to merge the different realities of the visable and invisable. ...

Nach 1945 trumpft die Kunst umfänglich erst wieder mit der 68er Bewegung schockierend auf. Etwa in der Pop-Art. Etwa mit den Bildtafeln eines Roy Lichtensteins. Seine Arbeiten, wie auch die anderer Pop-Artisten, tendieren indes zu einer Ästhetisierung des Schreckens. Zitatförmig nimmt Lichtenstein etwa Comic-Motive vom Krieg auf. Doch die Darstellung oszilliert zwischen Wohlgefallen an der Szenerie und Kritik an der Szenerie. Ähnlich ambivalent erscheinen die zahlreichen Drucke von Andy Warhol zum Thema "Kennedy-Mord".
Der wirkliche Schrei, Signum einer Vorkriegsepoche, taucht nicht mehr auf. Ausnahme von der Regel sind die Werke von Gottfried Helnwein. Sie zielen nochmals auf die Scham- und Peinlichkeitsschwelle. Oder sie machen aus dem täglichen Schrecken im Fernsehen ein formatfüllendes Standbild, ("Das Wunder I", 1980, "Das Lied I", 1981). ...

Gottfried Helnwein’s photography project “Ninth November Night," a spectacular work of art that recalls the destruction of the synagogues during the so-called “Reichskristallnacht,” was itself the target of an attack.
On Monday night an unknown person destroyed all seventeen child portraits with knife slashes. The portraits had been set up between the Museum Ludwig and the Dome of Cologne.
Helnwein had financed the project himself. ...

The lane of pictures between Ludwig Museum and the Dome of Cologne is one hundred meters long. Each panel is 4 meters high. There are thousands of people daily passing by the rear platform of the cathedral and by far the majority of them, only accustomed to the language of billboard-advertising, are baffled, indignant and shocked at the pale children’s faces, printed on large sheets of vinyl. The city council and museums of Cologne receive dozens of calls daily, finding themselves forced into a position of explanation and justification.
The Installation had barely been set up, when the first damage occurred: At night the large-sized child portraits, which had been made to appear distorted and old by the use of makeup, were slashed with knives; one picture was stolen. ...

Baumgartner Galleries is introducing the work of Gottfried Helnwein, a young Viennese artist who shares what seems to be an Austrian obsession with highly detailed realism - with a surrealistic edge. Trained at the Austrian Academy, and now in the process of moving to New York, Helnwein makes figurative drawings and watercolors that are occasionally gruesome, sometimes haunting and always ambiguous. Spatial and narrative ambiguity are, in fact, the central expressive devices in Helnwein's art. ...