Gottfried Helnwein (born 8 October 1948) is an Austrian-Irish visual artist. He has worked as a painter, draftsman, photographer, muralist, sculptor, installation and performance artist, using a wide variety of techniques and media.
His work is concerned primarily with psychological and sociological anxiety, historical issues and political topics. His subject matter is the human condition. The metaphor for his art is dominated by the image of the child, particularly the wounded child, scarred physically and emotionally from within.Robert Flynn Johnson, Curator of the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums, "The Child – Works by Gottfried Helnwein", essay for the catalogue of the one man show at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, , 2004 His works often reference taboo and controversial issues from recent history, especially the Nazi rule and the Holocaust. As a result, his work is often considered provocative and controversial.
Helnwein has produced artworks for rock bands the Rolling Stones, Scorpions and Rammstein. He has also partnered with Marilyn Manson in the production of The Golden Age of Grotesque and other projects.
Helnwein studied at the University of Visual Art in Vienna. He lives and works in Ireland, where he owns the Castle Gurteen de la Poer, and Los Angeles.
Life Helnwein was born in Vienna shortly after World War II. His father Joseph Helnwein worked for the Austrian Post and Telegraphy administration (Österreichische Post- und Telegraphenverwaltung), and his mother Margarethe was a housewife.
He has four children with his wife Renate: Cyril, Mercedes, Ali Elvis and Wolfgang Amadeus, all of whom are artists. He also has three grandchildren.Nicholas Haramis, New York Times, The Helnweins will see you now, 2 December 2014 helnwein.com In 2004, Helnwein received Irish citizenship.Mic Moroney, Irish Arts Review, Apocalypse now, Spring 2015, p.86-89Rose Martin, Irish Examiner, Déise delight – a Suir bet, 26 February 2011
Career and education Helnwein had a strict Roman Catholic upbringing. As a student he organized plays and art exhibitions at the Catholic Marian Society of the Jesuit University Church in Vienna. In 1965, he enrolled at the Higher Federal Institution for Graphic Education and Experimentation. In the following years, he started his first performances for small audiences where he cut his face and hands with razor blades and bandaged himself.
From 1969 to 1973, he studied at the University of Visual Art in Vienna. He was awarded a Master-class prize () of the University of Visual Art, Vienna, the Kardinal-König prize and the Theodor-Körner prize.Alexander Borovsky, The State Russian Museum St. Petersburg, Gottfried Helnwein, monograph, Palace Edition, p. 405-417,
Helnwein was offered a chair by the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in 1982. When his demand to admit also children to study at the university was rejected, he declined.Interview, Andreas Mackler talks with Gottfried Helnwein, 13. / 14. July and 21. / 22. September 1990, Verlag C.H.Beck, p.87, ,helnwein.com In 1983, Helnwein met Andy Warhol in his Factory in New York City, who posed for a series of photo-sessions. In 1985, Rudolf Hausner recommended Helnwein as his successor as professor of the master-class for painting at the University of Visual Art in Vienna, but Helnwein left Vienna and moved to Germany.Herbert Hufnagel, Kurier, Wien, Akademie: Helnwein als Professor-ein Schock?, Interview with Gottfried Helnwein, 13. Feb. 1985
Helnwein bought a medieval castle close to Cologne and the Rhine-river. Four years later, in 1989, he established a studio in Tribeca, New York, and thenceforth spent his time between the United States and Germany.Barnaby Conrad III, San Francisco Chronicle, German Portraits of Pain, Gottfried Helnwein reminds Society of its Past, 9 July 1992
Helnwein moved to Dublin, Ireland, in 1997 and one year later he bought the Castle Gurteen de la Poer in County Waterford.Gemma Tipton, Irish Times, Fantasy and Reality in one Place, 4 June 2016 helnwein.com In 2002, he established a studio in downtown Los Angeles and he lives and works since then in Ireland and Los Angeles.Lynell George, Los Angeles Times, Gottfried Helnwein - Dark Inspirations, 30 May 2008
On 3 December 2005, Helnwein served as best manThe wedding ceremony, Dita and Manson at Castle De la Poer, Ireland 2005, Alejandro Jodorowsky officiates at the wedding, Helnwein is best man, www.helnwein.com Gottfried Helnwein | Artist | Studio | Wedding ceremony, Dita and Manson at Castle De la Poer Hamish Bowles, Steven Klein, "The Bride Wore Purple", Vogue, pages 546–556, March 2006 at the wedding of his friend Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese, in a private, non-denominational ceremony at Helnwein's castle.Maeve Quigley, "Rocker ties Knot with Dita", Sunday Mirror, UK, 4 December 2005 Gottfried Helnwein | Ireland | Ireland Special | Rocker Ties Knot With Dita The wedding was officiated by surrealist film director Alejandro JodorowskyPeople magazine, "Marilyn Manson Marries Girlfriend in Ireland", 4 December 2005
In 2013, the Albertina Museum in Vienna organized a retrospective of Helnwein's work. The show was seen by 250,000 visitors and was the most successful exhibition of a contemporary artist in the history of the Albertina.Madonna mit dem Kind und der SS, Berliner Zeitung, Arno Widmann, 6 October 2013 genios.deSusanne Zobl, "Helnwein schliesst seine Albertina Ausstellung - 250 000 Besucher", News, Wien, 2013, helnwein.com
Notable works Helnwein is part of a tradition going back to the 18th century, to which Messerschmidt's grimacing sculptures belong. One sees, too, the common ground of his works with those of Arnulf Rainer and Hermann Nitsch, two other Viennese, who display their own bodies in the frame of reference of injury, pain, and death. And one sees how this fascination with body language goes back to the expressive gesture in the work of Egon Schiele.Roland Recht, '', Gottfried Helnwein, one-man show, Musée d'Art Moderne, Strasbourg, 1987
The Child
Helnwein's early work consists mainly of hyperrealistic watercolors, depicting wounded children, as well as photographs and performances – often with children – in public spaces. The bandaged child became the most important figure next to the artist himself allied with him in his actions: the embodiment of the innocent, defenceless individual at the mercy of brute force.
Art historian Peter Gorsen specified the relation between Helnwein's work and Viennese Actionism.Peter Gorsen, "The Divided Self – Gottfried Helnwein in his Self-Portraits", "Der Untermensch", Verlag Braus, Heidelberg, 1988.
In 2004, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco organized the first one-person exhibition of Gottfried Helnwein at an American Museum: "The Child, works by Gottfried Helnwein" at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor.Nirmala Nataraj, "Gottfried Helnwein's The Child – Innocence Lost", SF Station, San Francisco, 15 August 2004 Gottfried Helnwein's The Child | SF Station
The show was seen by almost 130,000 visitors and the San Francisco Chronicle quoted 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".Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic, "Critics Choices 2004, Top Ten", The San Francisco Chronicle, 26 December 2004
Self portraits
At the same time when Helnwein painted watercolors of injured and abused children, from 1969, around 1970/71 he also began a series of self-portrayals in photographs and performances (actions) in his studio and in the streets of Vienna. Actionistic self-portrayals in the manner of a happening featuring his injured and bandaged body and surgical instruments deforming his face go back to Helnwein's student days. Since then, bandages have become part of the aesthetic "uniform" of his self-portraits.Peter Gorsen, Die Verwandlungskunst des Doppelgängers - zu den Selbstbildnissen bei Gottfried Helnwein, 'Der Untermensch', Verlag Braus, Heidelberg, J&V Verlag, Wien, January 1988.
The artist exposed himself as victim and martyr: bandages around his head and forks and surgical instruments piercing his mouth or cheek. Frequently the distortions of these tormented images make it difficult to recognize Helnwein's face. He appears as a screaming man, mirroring the frightening aspects of life: a twentieth-century Man of Sorrows. His frozen cry, showing the artist in a state of implacable trauma, recalls Edvard Munch's Scream and Francis Bacon's screaming popes. Some of Helnwein's grimacing faces also recall the grotesque physiognomic distortions by the eighteenth-century Viennese sculptor Franz Xavier Messerschmidt. They could also be seen as part of the Austrian pictorial tradition that resurfaced in the perturbed and distorted expressionist faces painted by Kokoschka and Egon Schiele before World War I, reappearing in the exaggerated mimicry in Arnulf Rainer's "Face Farces".Peter Selz, Helnwein - The Artist as Provocateur, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Palace Edition 1997, pp. 11–98,
William S. Burroughs commented on Helnwein's self-portraits in an essay in 1992: There is a basic misconception that any given face, at any given time, looks more or less the same, like a statue's face. Actually, the human face is as variable from moment to moment as a screen on which images are reflected, from within and from without. Gottfried Helnwein's paintings and photographs attack this misconception, showing the variety of faces of which any face is capable. And in order to attack the basic misconception, he must underline and exaggerate by distortion, by bandages and metal instruments that force the face into impossible molds. Images of torture and madness abound, as happens from moment to moment in the face seen as a sensitive reflection of extreme perceptions and experience. How can a self-portrait depict statuesque calm in the face of the horrors that surround us all?William S. Burroughs, "Helnwein's Work", 1990. Helnwein Faces, 1992 Edition Stemmle.
In a conversation with Robert A. Sobieszek, curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Helnwein declared: "The reason why I took up the subject of self-portraits and why I have put myself on stage was to function as a kind of representative for the suffering, abused and oppressed human being. I needed a living body to demonstrate and exemplify the effect of violence inflicted upon a defenseless victim. There is nothing autobiographical or therapeutical about it, and I don't think it says anything about me personally. Also I was the best possible model for my experiments: endlessly patient and always available."Robert A. Sobieszek, Ghost in the Shell, Photography and the Human Soul, 1850-2000, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2000.
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