The recent landscape show by Gottfried Helnwein at the Crawford Gallery in Cork contained a homage to Friedrich’s The Wreck of the Hope, while the current Walker & Walker exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy features a three-dimensional recreation of his work Wanderer in the Mist. Because it is a show culled from the extensive collection of Berlin’s Nationalgalerie, A German Dream does not include these two key works, both of which are in Hamburg’s Kunsthalle, but the six works that are included still offer a tantalising taster. They point the way to understanding Friedrich’s iconic idealism and energy, but what they highlight even more pointedly is the need for a comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work. ...

Marilyn Manson: "Gottfried Helnwein whom I collaborated with a lot invited us to get married at one of his castles in either Germany or Ireland," Manson said. "So we thought we would just have the pageantry and the ceremony of a normal wedding, but without the church. Because I don't think that I would really be welcome there." ...

This exhibition by internationally renowned artist Gottfried Helnwein continues in the Crawford Art Gallery until September 4 th next. Helnwein bases himself between Co. Tipperary and Los Angeles and is exhibiting a number of large scale photorealist canvases depicting landscape. Perhaps more recognized as a painter of highly emotive portraits, this exhibition will reveal the influence of landscape throughout his career from the early Vienna cityscapes to the present series of Irish landscapes and recognizes the impact which the German romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) has had on Helnwein’s work. Born in Vienna in 1948, he is a formidable artist and his work has often been seen as controversial because it functions as moral probes. ...

… ces peintures photo apparaissent même plus réelles qu’une photographie : elles sont hyper-réelles, des descriptions super-saturées du monde qui nous entoure, tel qu’on aimerait bien le voir. Les paysages de Helnwein nous offrent le monde tel qu’on le voit devant notre œil intérieur, nos mémoires.
Ce qui est certain c’est qu’avec ces travaux, Helnwein a levé la barre pour de futurs artistes avec un art qui est révolutionnaire en termes d’échelle, d’habileté et de vision. Peintures de montagnes, champs et du ciel ne pourront plus jamais être le même … ...

Visitors to Gottfried Helnwein's show of panoramic landscapes at the Crawford Municipial Gallery in Cork are having trouble deceiding either they are looking at paintings or photographs. Some are up to seven metres in length, by two metres wide:
a breathtaking, epic scale. They are extraordinarily beautiful, by any standards, and, yes, they are paintings.
The finish may be photorealist, but these are not direct transcriptions of what the camera lens sees; they are edited and informed by the artist's eye.
Take a close look at Irish Landscape III (Nire Valley) or Irish Landscape IV (County Waterford). Nor do they represent what the naked eye can see. American Landscape (Death Valley) is so wide that it has an almost vertiginous effect.
Dawn Williams who curated this show has done a superb job. ...

...the work is extremely ambitious, both in terms of scale and rendering - some paintings are seven metres long and all are so realistic that they are nearly indistinguishable from photographs.
Consequently they cannot fail but to strike a chord, as you marvel at the skill involved in creating such vivid and realistic landscape views. So much so that Fáilte Ireland is surely gaining free advertising, as many will be inspired to venture out and experience these places first hand.
Helnwein re-creates theses vistas using a composite of photographic sources which cram multiple focal points into a single view. The surfaces are absolutely flawless with practically no evidence of the artist's brushwork. Studying the surface is absorbing, as the viewer is immersed in the detail as much as seductive wider views of the vast, undulating topography. ...

Almost 'autobiographical landscapes', the paintings in this exhibition by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein broadly outline the migrations he, and his family, have made from his native Vienna, through Germany, to America and Ireland, his family home since 1997. Yet these landscapes also mark a return to his earliest artistic inspiration. Helnwein's meticulous Irish landscapes are unashamedly aesthetic and the typically epic, but not inhuman scale, imitates the subject matter with each painting seeming to breathe a sense of a year well advanced, after the effusive growth and floral displays of May. Sunset beckons here and with it, Romanticism. ...

Helnwein talkes to Olga Buckley ...

The Times:
"...these photo-paintings appear even more real than a photograph: they are hyper-real, super-saturated depictions of the world that surrounds us, as we would like to see it. Helnwein’s landscapes offer us the world as we see it in our mind’s eye, our memories.
What is certain is that with these works Helnwein has raised the bar for artists to come with art that is groundbreaking in terms of scale, skill and vision. Painted mountains, fields and sky can never be the same again." ...

Jul 2-30 Summer Exhibition Includes works by William Crozier, Gottfried Helnwein and Sarah Walker. ...

"Helnwein's meticulous Irish landscapes, which are the cornerstone of this Crawford show, are unashamedly aesthetic: gorgeous confections of pure, delicious spectacle. The typically epic but not inhuman scale imitates the subject matter. The tonal realism will make people go "Wow, are they paintings?" - thanks to the photorealist finish which seems free of the foibles of the human hand. Helnwein works with very small brushes - highlighting and subtly magnifying here, muting colours or creating shadows there; pushing some paintings towards momentary sleights of impressionism; and others towards seamless, burnished hyperreality. The bird's eye view suggests a kind of superhuman vision which can simultaneously take in the entire view with breath-taking clarity, like some bionic eagle."
Mic Moroney, from the essay "Out of the Apocalypse into the Sublime - bursting into Irish Landscape: Citizen Helnwein" ...

Juillet – Août 2004 ...

* Helnwein's Epiphany I has been up on our site for years now. For a while I used it as wallpaper on my desktop. Perhaps that explains how the first hypertext poem came to be one about the Virgin. But as I struggled with updating the site, I checked all my old resources and came across materials that explain Helnwein's commitments and meanings far better than I could alone. ...

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"When I am reincarnated I want to come back to this castle and relive tonight!"
Nora Owen,
former Minister for Justice of Ireland ...

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Continuing the theme of documenting the landscape, internationally renowned artist Goffried Helnwein will exhibit a number of large-scale photo-realist canvases depicting Irish landscapes. Helnwein lives for much of the year in Co. Tipperary and his paintings illustrate the drama and the beauty of the countryside as well as revealing the changing landscape of Ireland.
Helnwein, (born in Vienna in 1948), is a formidable artist and his work has often been proved controversial, because they function as moral probes. He continually reveals emotive issues within his work practice. ...

Ich spüre ein überwältigend emotionales Gefühl, wenn ich im Flugzeug sitze und schaue herunter auf diese kleine grüne Insel Irland. Ich werde so sentimental dass ich Tränen in den Augen habe.
Obwohl ich dort nicht geboren bin, habe ich das Gefühl, ich gehöre zu diesen vielen Iren, die dort seit Jahrhunderten um ihre ihre karge Existenz kämpfen, singen, dichten, saufen und ständig auswandern mussten. Aus irgendeinem Grunde fühle ich mich als Teil dieser eigenartigen und traurigen Geschichte. ...

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Après avoir côtoyé quelques uns des plus grands noms de l'art contemporain pendant son enfance Cyril Helnwein vit aujourd'hui discrètement en Irlande, entouré d'un cercle d'amis fidèles, célèbres ou non, auprès de qui il semble trouver une certaine sérénité. Les paillettes de la renommée ? Il les laisse à d'autres -qui ont plus de temps que lui à perdre en galas et dîners mondains. Rapide entretien avec un artiste de l'ombre qui tente de mettre notre monde en lumière... ...