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- Sammlung © Gottfried Helnwein, VG Bild VG Helnwein, Gottfried © Sammlung Gottfried Helnwein, The Murmur of the Innocents 71, 2019, Private

Gottfried Helnwein is known for his hyper-realistic images and his photo portraits of celebrities such as Mick Jagger, , , , and the band . In his provocative images, he articulates themes of violence and abuse in a way that is as captivating as it is shocking. Children in particular, whose innocence, naivety and tenderness he focuses on, are his projection screen. Violence essentially takes place in the associative gaze of the viewer, who allows himself to be captured by the bandaged, but also physically tortured children as well as adults. Helnwein is a skilfully staging artist who visibly incorporates adaptations and quotations from art history.

Above all, the culture of European Romanticism provides him with iconographic motifs and subjects, especially its black side, with its abysses of the soul lost in nightmares, in the disturbing and in its own dramaturgy of fear and cruelty. Moreover, it is also the landscapes of longing that show another side of sensibility and which, in Helnwein's work, pointedly thematise the apocalyptic. This iconographically charged trace in Helnwein's work is to be traced in the exhibition, for it leads logically from quotations by Caspar David Friederich (Eismeer), to Johann Heinrich Füssli, Arnold Böcklin, to the emphatically Christian in early Romanticism and to 's "Gesamtkunstwerk". From Wagner and Nietzsche, a stringent arc develops to Hitler's propaganda machinery, the staged epic mass marches of the SS and culminates in Helnwein's great admiration for , whereby he even fits into the context of Nazi rule.

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Avant Garde III, 2010, Private © Sammlung Gottfried Helnwein, VG Bild 2021 Gottfried Helnwein, The Silent Glow of the

The exhibition is dedicated for the first time to this level of reflection in Helnwein's oeuvre and first summarises those dark paintings in which the image is developed out of blackness and deep blue (as a romantic keynote). She begins by quoting C.D. Friedrich's "Eismeer" as well as Helnwein's "Iceman" and "Fireman". It addresses facets of black romanticism in Helnwein's paintings and leads on to the atrocities of the Nazi regime, in that in particular the experiments on prisoners and those segregated into psychiatric wards underpin the racial ideology. The central motif of almost all of Helnwein's pictures is the innocent child, above all defencelessly at the mercy of adults. The childlike nature, from the innocence of the early years to young girls who later take up arms themselves, shows differentiated facets of the soul in his works, which are stirring, emotionally gripping and technically brilliantly realised. Helnwein intertwines and weaves together different pictorial

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history as well as taking mass Kunst B Kunst media and comics into - consideration. Taken together,

these borrowings and quotations

Magi Magi 3), 2013, Besitz des Künstlers Bild VG Helnwein, © Gottfried form the basis for the outwardly Gottfried Helnwein, Epiphany I (Adoration of the barely visible violence against weaker people, against children in particular, who are the victims of psychological perversions. In more recent works, however, the relationship between victim and perpetrator itself tilts in the shape of the fragile- looking girl who ultimately mutates into an arsonist herself.

Gottfried Helnwein, who lives in Ireland and Los Angeles, has been a highly respected international artist for decades and has lost none of his impact. His themes seem - on the contrary - to be more topical than ever.

Early on, works by him were acquired by the famous collector couple Peter and Irene Ludwig, which are now in the Ludwig Forum in Aachen, the Ludwig Museum in and the State Russian Museum, the so-called Marble Palace, in St. Petersburg, among other places. Numerous international exhibitions in important museums and theatre productions followed.

Works on loan for the exhibition at the Ludwig Museum come from the collection of the Albertina, Vienna, the artist's own collection as well as numerous private collections from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The works in the exhibition will subsequently be presented at the 17th Architecture Biennale in Venice.

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalogue (German/English). Authors: Klaus Honnef (art critic), Demetrio Paparoni (art critic), Beate Reifenscheid (Ludwig Museum, Koblenz), Publisher: Silvana Editoriale, Milan, German/English, 176 pages, price approx. 29,-Euro in the museum.

Dates

Social Media Preview Beginning April 1, 2021

Press Appointment Friday, 9 April 2021, at 11 a.m. With Prof. Dr. Beate Reifenscheid and Gottfried Helnwein

Opening Sunday, April 11, 2021, at 11 a.m. The artist will be present.

Due to the Corona pandemic, there may be changes and restrictions on the number of people. Please check the museum's website in advance of events at short notice for the latest measures: www.ludwigmuseum.org

Contact

E-Mail: [email protected] Phone: 0261 / 30 40 415 Website: www.ludwigmuseum.org