Gottfried Helnwein | ARTIST | Biography

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Biography

Jahrhunderthalle Bochum, 28. March 2009

The Steiger Award honours personalities for directness, openness, humanitarianism and tolerance. Further prize winners this year were Sir Bob Geldof (music), Maximilian Schell (life’s work), former president of Germany Prof. Dr. Roman Herzog (tolerance), Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxemburg (charity), Veronica Ferres (film), Sir David Frost (media), former prime minister of Italy Romano Prodi and former president of Poland Aleksander Kwasinewski (Europe). Dr. Antje Vollmer, former speaker of parliament, gave the laudation for Gottfried Helnwein . mehr...

"Gottfried Helnwein's latest exhibition, "Face It", is the artist's first show in his native Austria since 1985. A retrospective of 40 works from the 1970s to the present, it is more shocking than the Royal Academy's infamous "Sensation" of 1997. Helnwein aims to disturb not with, say, an elephant-dung Madonna, as Chris Ofili did then, but with a far more controversial Virgin. Of all his paintings, the most disturbing is Epiphany (1996), for which he dips into our collective memory of Christianity's most famous birth. This Austrian Catholic Nativity scene has no magi bearing gifts. Madonna and child are encircled by five respectful Waffen SS officers palpably in awe of the idealised, kitsch-blonde Virgin. The Christ toddler, who stands on Mary's lap, stares defiantly out of the canvas. Helnwein's baby Jesus is Adolf Hitler." mehr...

A documentary on the works of Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein commemorating the Reichskristallnacht.

For the past twenty-four years the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy Foundation, in association with the UCLA Film and Television Archive, has presented a series of film programs featuring the outstanding documentaries of the previous year. The film, NINTH NOVEMBER NIGHT, was considered by the Academy’s Documentary Screening Committee to be one of the outstanding documentaries of 2004. It is our wish to include a screening of "Ninth November Night" in this prestigious series on the evening of Wednesday, November 30, 2005. mehr...

The show is seen by almost 130,000 visitors and the San Francisco Chronicle quotes it the most important exhibition of a contemporary artist in 2004. Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic, wrote: "Helnwein's large format, photo-realist images of children of various demeanors boldly probed the subconscious. Innocence, sexuality, victimization and haunting self-possession surge and flicker in Helnwein's unnerving work" mehr...

Although, Kiefer’s work differs considerably from Helnwein’s in his concern with the effect of German aggression on the national psyche and the complexities of German cultural heritage. But Kiefer and Helnwein’s work are both informed by the personal experience of growing up in a post-war German speaking country... William Burroughs said that the American revolution begins in books and music, and political operatives implement the changes after the fact. To this maybe we can add art. And Helnwein's art might have the capacity to instigate change by piercing the veil of political correctness to recapture the primitive gesture inherent in art." mehr...

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