"I ask, I do not answer."
- My works are questions, not answers, says the Austrian, Gottfried Helnwein,
time and time again focusing on the most sore points of contemporary, general and private history.
The retrospective exhibition of this controversial artist was opened yesterday in Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art and is open until 22nd of November.
Helnwein says he became an artist because, being born after the war, he had so many questions to ask.
He also stresses that the same questions must be asked again and again.
"I, as probably every artist does, have only one theme which I incessantly vary. The use of diverse techniques is but a means of getting closer to one's original goals." ...

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. ...

"Child's Head", 1991, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 650x403.5
Pg. 278
The early stages of this monumental head can be seen in Helnwein's widely varied portrayals from the seventies of suffering children, but above all in the Cologne installation of anonymous children's portraits "9th November Night" from 1988.
The human face, in particular the child's face, is of great fascination for Helnwein and consequently accounts for one of his central pictorial subjects. The monumental face of a little girl which is introduced here is, as it were, representative of all children. In our adult society oriented towards profit and success, children can almost be described as a fringe group, their interests indeed being observed in a comparatively modest fashion. Against this background, this monumentalizing of the face in connection with the hyperrealistic style of painting is to be understood as an oppressive irritation of our customary experience of perception.
Originally the child's head was shown in a Minorite church in Krems, Stein; in fact it was placed at the focal point of a huge early Gothic room which lent the picture a positively sacral tone. ...

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Münchener Muffathallen-Produktion und die Geschichte eines Bildes und einer Witwe. Finis eines gefährlich-absurden post(?)-faschistischen Vorspiels: Ingeborg Wünsche. Witwe eines SS-Mannes, hat von den angedrohten juristischen Schritten gegen Gottfried Helnweins "SS-Gruppenbild mit Madonna und Kind" (wir berichteten) schließlich abgesehen... ...

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

Helnwein Monograph, the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
texts by:
Alexander Borovsky
Curator for Contemporary Art at the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Статья А.Д.Боровского - THE HELNWEIN PASSION
Peter Selz
Professor Emeritus, Department of Art History, University of California, Berkeley. Former Curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum.
HELNWEIN: THE ARTIST AS PROVOCATEUR
Klaus Honnef
Curator for Contemporary Art at Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn
THE SUBVERSIVE POWER OF ART
Evgenija Nicolaevna Petrova
Chief Curator of the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
THE METAPHORICAL PRINCIPLE OF GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN ...

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. ...

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