105 - GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN

GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN (born 1948 in Vienna; works in Waterford, Ireland, and Los Angeles, USA) God as a General, 1987 Oil and pastel on paper. 78 x 52 cm. Framed behind glass with a mat. Signed lower right. Titled and dated on a label on the reverse. Helnwein is an internationally renowned artist who became known for his hyperrealistic paintings. He trained between 1969 and 1973 in Professor Rudolf Hausner’s master class for painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. His early exhibitions, in particular, were at times highly controversial in Austria. After working in Germany in the 1980s and 1990s, he moved to Ireland in 1997. Since 2002, he has been working alternately there and in Los Angeles. “God as General” depicts a figure in three-quarter profile against a blue-gray background. The skull glows white, while the face beneath it is lost in black—the area around the eyes remains entirely in shadow, rendering the figure blind or refusing to look. Only the shoulder remains clearly visible: set off in blue, with heavy forms upon it reminiscent of a uniform and rank insignia. Black, hand-like shapes also emerge from the darkness of the silhouette, seeming to reach for the insignia—whether to secure or to tear them away remains open to the viewer’s interpretation. Therein lies the core of the painting: the fusion of religious and military authority into a single, blind, and faceless figure exposes both as constructs of the same logic—power that eludes every gaze and every accountability. All that remains legible is the office, the insignia; the person wearing it is lost behind it. Oil and pastel chalk are worked together while wet, smudged, and then layered again. The figure emerges from the background and at the same time sinks back into it—an apparition that defies definition. Authority and the religious pictorial tradition permeate Helnwein’s work, here concentrated and at the same time called into question in a single figure.