Author: Helnwein, Gottfried (born 1948)
Title: The Disasters of War, 2 for Foreign Cinema. Gottfried Helnwein Exhibition Poster
Description: San Francisco: Modernism, 1998. Poster. 51 x 81cm. Helnwein repeatedly shows children in military uniforms and holding weapons, some with bandages and bloody wounds. In these works, the artist focuses on the ideological and physical abuse of children, examining the roles of perpetrator and victim. The girls bring to mind child soldiers. With his works, Helnwein also alludes to the numerous school shootings in the United States, where firearms is the leading cause of death for children and adolescents. The title The Disasters of War refers to Francisco de Goya’s well-known cycle of prints Los desastres de la guerra, in which the artist, following Napoleon’s military campaign on the Iberian Peninsula (1808–1814), condemned the atrocities of the war. Helnwein points out: “I believe it is the artist’s responsibility to be a witness of his time, to capture this madness, and prevent people from forgetting. In his work, Goya documented the horrors of war down to the last abominable detail, probably in the futile hope that this would prevent tragedy from constantly repeating itself.” In Helnwein’s art, we are not faced with murder, torture, and rape, we do not see faces distorted by pain. In his monumental pictures, the horrors are conveyed through silence and the children’s compelling presence. Over the past four decades, Gottfried Helnwein has developed an extraordinarily powerful and idiosyncratic visual vocabulary reflected in his masterful use of multiple media: painting, drawing, photography, performance, and stage design. Building on artistic precedents including the work of Francesco Goya, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt and Joseph Beuys, Helnwein addresses a broad range of social and political issues, resulting in challenging and provocative artworks. The metaphor for his art is dominated by the image of the child, particularly the wounded child, scarred physically and emotionally from within. Although at times disturbing, these works are deeply humane, and seek spiritual beauty often approaching the transcendental. Most recently the subject of a major retrospective at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Helnwein’s work has been exhibited extensively worldwide, and is featured in the collections of major museums in Europe, Asia and the United States. .
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Title: The Disasters of War, 2 for Foreign Cinema. Gottfried Helnwein Exhibition Poster
Description: San Francisco: Modernism, 1998. Poster. 51 x 81cm. Helnwein repeatedly shows children in military uniforms and holding weapons, some with bandages and bloody wounds. In these works, the artist focuses on the ideological and physical abuse of children, examining the roles of perpetrator and victim. The girls bring to mind child soldiers. With his works, Helnwein also alludes to the numerous school shootings in the United States, where firearms is the leading cause of death for children and adolescents. The title The Disasters of War refers to Francisco de Goya’s well-known cycle of prints Los desastres de la guerra, in which the artist, following Napoleon’s military campaign on the Iberian Peninsula (1808–1814), condemned the atrocities of the war. Helnwein points out: “I believe it is the artist’s responsibility to be a witness of his time, to capture this madness, and prevent people from forgetting. In his work, Goya documented the horrors of war down to the last abominable detail, probably in the futile hope that this would prevent tragedy from constantly repeating itself.” In Helnwein’s art, we are not faced with murder, torture, and rape, we do not see faces distorted by pain. In his monumental pictures, the horrors are conveyed through silence and the children’s compelling presence. Over the past four decades, Gottfried Helnwein has developed an extraordinarily powerful and idiosyncratic visual vocabulary reflected in his masterful use of multiple media: painting, drawing, photography, performance, and stage design. Building on artistic precedents including the work of Francesco Goya, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt and Joseph Beuys, Helnwein addresses a broad range of social and political issues, resulting in challenging and provocative artworks. The metaphor for his art is dominated by the image of the child, particularly the wounded child, scarred physically and emotionally from within. Although at times disturbing, these works are deeply humane, and seek spiritual beauty often approaching the transcendental. Most recently the subject of a major retrospective at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Helnwein’s work has been exhibited extensively worldwide, and is featured in the collections of major museums in Europe, Asia and the United States. .
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Price: US$ 100.00 Seller: Wittenborn Art Books
- Book number: 51-5635
- Book number: 51-5635
See more books from our catalog: Art