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. 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. In 2004, Helnwein received Irish citizenship.
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 (Meisterschulpreis) of the University of Visual Art, Vienna, the Kardinal-König prize and the Theodor-Körner prize. 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. 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. 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. Helnwein moved to Dublin, Ireland, in 1997 and one year later he bought the Castle Gurteen de la Poer in County Waterford. In 2002, he established a studio in downtown Los Angeles and he lives and works since then in Ireland and Los Angeles. On 3 December 2005, Helnwein served as best man at the wedding of his friend Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese, in a private, non-denominational ceremony at Helnwein's castle. The wedding was officiated by surrealist film director Alejandro Jodorowsky 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.
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.
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. 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. 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".
Self portraits
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