Gottfried Helnwein

Gottfried Helnwein – Dull childhood in post-war Austria

Gottfried Helnwein was born in Vienna on 8 October 1948. The son of a post office clerk, he spent his childhood and youth in the Austrian capital city and attended the Federal Education and Research Institute for Graphics, followed by painting studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna until 1983 in the master class of Rudolf Hausner. For Helnwein, this period of learning was also a phase of experimentation during which he tried out diverse techniques and styles. He discovered early on the motif of the suffering child as a symbol for a volent world and daily life full of injustice. The public reacted with anger and indignation to the sometimes hyper-realistic depictions of bandaged, scarred or otherwise disfigured and wounded children: exhibitions had to be closed prematurely and individual works were confiscated by the police. 

Balancing act between martyrdom and trivial culture

Gottfried Helnwein has commented several times on his controversial choice of motifs, locating the reason for these pictures in his own childhood with the impressions he acquired from the internally torn post-war Austria. His aim is not to provoke, but much rather he sees himself as provoked by the wretched state of the world, against which he wants to protest with his art. Images such as the little girl holding a machine gun pointed at the viewer are meant to fight against the brutalisation of the world, not promote it. The artist wishes to reach the people, not scare them away – to this end, in addition to his childlike martyr figures, he is interested particularly in the trivial figures of contemporary pop culture. After all, it was a pile of colourful Mickey Mouse magazines that provided him with a touch of escapism during the grey post-war period. Perhaps this was also the reason that Gottfried Helnwein explicitly chose Walt Disney as his role model. 

Donald Duck and Carl Barks as important teachers

Gottfried Helnwein claims to have learnt more from the lectures of Donald Duck and the study of the drawings of the comic draughtsman Carl Banks than during his whole time at the Vienna Academy. In general, he does not like to look back on his school and study years; rather, Gottfried Helnwein rejects any academic training and strives to go his own way. Consequently, he turned down a chair at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg in 1982. It was not the only time that a possible teaching position fell through – when his teacher Rudolf Hausner requested Helnwein succeed him in 1985, this was rejected, as it was by the majority of the other Viennese professors. Due to increasing hostility in his native Austria, Gottfried Helnwein moved with his family to Germany where he began combining large format photographs and abstract paintings. In 1997, Helnwein moved to Ireland, bought a castle, and took Irish citizenship in 2004.