Gottfried Helnwein | A Contemporary Austrain - Irish Hyperrealist Painter

Gottfried Helnwein's Paintings

 Gottfried Helnwein is a rock star in the fine arts, but his work goes well beyond painting to include photography, theatrical performances, and postmodern art practices. He is both adored and despised, owing to his terrifying and nauseatingly realistic paintings. Helnwein was born in Vienna, and his art was influenced by the post-traumatic mentality of a defeated country. Reality took on the look of disaster on his canvases: a mangled infant, turned inside out humanity - in a Nazi uniform, with gray hair and a bandaged, bloodied skull. Helnwein, a multifaceted artist and painter, organizer of performances and installations, author of album covers for Rammstein and Scorpions, and photographer for Marilyn Manson, stands behind this monolith of witnessed horror. He is not hypocritical at all. One of the most well-known modern artists, Gottfried Helnwein has amazed people over the past forty years with his paintings, photography, sculptures, installations of all types, remarkable performances, and even the fabrication of theatrical sets. 

Born in Austria-Ireland in 1948, Gottfried Helnwein My birthplace of Vienna, which was devastated by the Second World War, was a dismal place. The Third Reich's dark shadows remained in place. "flung back onto the city, and the air smelled of death. I recall deserted streets, destroyed houses, rust, debris, no flowers, and silence. A sense of hopelessness prevailed. Every adult I saw appeared to be broken, quiet, and gloomy. I have never heard someone sing or seen someone laugh. The planet had come to a halt, seemingly undecided about the continuation of existence. I had no idea at the time that my parents' generation had just finished the worst genocide in recorded history and had just lost two consecutive wars. In my early years, the only artwork I saw were chilly, 19th-century paintings on the walls of martyrs and saints who had been tortured and covered in blood. All that changed one day when the officers of the occupying American forces—may God bless their hearts—thought it would be a good idea to introduce some American culture, like Walt Disney cartoons, to us Nazi kids in Germany and Austria. The imaginative illustrations of Carl Barks's Donald Duck tales astounded and shocked us. A culture shock occurred. For me, too, this was a eureka moment. I felt as though I had stepped out of my parents' realm of death and evil from yesterday and into a bright, limitless future after reading the first comic. I inhaled deeply. Something sensed sprang to life."