"Austria has been one of the main hubs of European culture, especially in music and art. The artists are not always conventional or conformist. Like the recent Nobel Prize winner for literature, Elfriede Jelinek, some of Helnwein’s work, which takes an uncomfortable look at Austria’s past and the unhealthily close relationship between Church and Sate in the Nazi era, has caused controversy.
I think we should be in no doubt that we are in the presence of the work of an artist of exceptional stature."

"Your paintings have left a deep impact on me.
To be honest - they have shocked me.
I have thought about it for a long time and came finally to the conclusion, that people should be confronted with these images to be inspired to think."

"In a moving exhibition at the Wilhelm Busch Museum in Hannover, paintings of the Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein are on view. One of his paintings shows a girl with a rascally face wearing an armband for the blind, with her tongue sticking out. At first I smiled. If you keep looking at this painting, you will see that the girl has blood running down the inside of her legs. The child obviously was abused, force was used against her... yes, children are vulnerable. Childhood can be terrible, when children are at the mercy of someone.
- I'm thinking of the 12 year old Judith Wischnajatskaja, who wrote her last letter in July 1942: "Dear Father! With death I bid you goodbye. We would like to live so much but we are not allowed, we will perish. I am so afraid of this death because the little children are thrown into the pit alive."

"Helnwein's Images are shocking - may it be through drastic depiction of the opressing or opressed human being, or through the deconstruction of conventional and accommodating pictures.
Is it possible that the reason for the outraged reaction lies in the beholder himself?
Helnwein is an exceedingly political artist, not through big speeches but through the message of his art. That's why his work is important especially in times where artists often confine themself to shallow fun-culture. "

"The theme of violence and the theme “he as victim” proceed from Beckmann’s early work from 1907 till today.
Bruce Naumann, Marcel Odenbach, Jeff Wall und Gottfried Helnwein changed the artistic means radically but not the theme itself.
Helnwein’s fascinating oeuvre embraces total antipodes. Helnwein is an artist of uncompromising expression: The trivial, for example the Disney-culture, alternates with visions of spiritual doom, the divine in the child contrasts with horror-images of child-abuse.
But violence remains to be his basic theme, - the physical and the emotional suffering, inflicted by one human being unto another."

"The grin found on the faces of ill-treated children, a grotesque picture puzzle which includes both the martyrdom and subversion of mankind is entirely Helnwein’s invention. It is manifested in the metamorphic images of injured bodies. It is an obsessive pattern which is repeated in Helnwein’s pictoral representation of the world and in his staged artistic actions, serving as a metaphor for the invulnerability and invincibility deeply seated in man."

""In memory of the children of Europe who have to die of cold and hunger this Xmas", was written on the draft of a poster in the winter of 1945 by the Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka who emigrated to London. He had 5000 copies printed at his own cost and posted in underground stations.
In late autumn 1988 the Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein, who emigrated to the Rhineland, mounted a series of five meter high photo prints with children's faces along a one hundred meter long wall between the cathedral of Cologne and the Museum Ludwig. He called the work Selection (Ninth November Night). It is a work of monstrous expression and painful effect. His title recalls the anniversary of the so-called Reichskristallnacht, through which Helnwein gives the children's portraits their almost overwhelmingly harrowing effect.
As we were preparing his exhibition for the Lentos Art Museum together with Gottfried Helnwein, I was researching at the same time for a different project about Kokoschka. The story of the London posters was new to me. Unintentionally and unexpectedly the two artist lives blended into one another for a brief poignant moment. With a tremendous creative effort, ability to communicate, organizational experience, implementation energy and financial resources, both artists devoted themselves on a specific occasion to an appeal: Remember!"

"Einer erstellt die summe seiner beobachtungen in dieser welt der patzer und dämonen.
er vernimmt die schreie aus den gekachelten schreckträumen abseits einer satten gesellschaft, die weder mit dem laub der bäume noch mit dem grün der laubfrösche noch mit den froschaugen des miterlebens zu schaffen haben will.
er aber hört manche, die da schreien bis ihnen die gehirne zerspringen wie lichtjahre, und hört andere, still vor sich hinweinende, deren tropfende tränen eines noch-hoffens mit dem abscheulichen eisskalpell der hoffnungslosigkeit seziert werden. "

"Die Zurschaustellung des eigenen Körpers als Verwesungsmasse beginnt mit den Selbstporträts von George Grosz als Suizidgestalt im Kaffeehaus und reicht über die wie durch den Fleischwolf gedrehten Konterfeis eines Francis Bacon bis hin zur Leichenfledderei am eigenen Leib bei Günter Brus, Kurt Kren oder Frank Tovey, dem jüngst verstorbenen Enfant terrible der experimentellen New-Wave-Szene der 1980er Jahre. Die Befreiung des melancholischen Bewusstseins durch den Tod bietet keine philosophische Perspektive mehr. Es ist ihm ohnedies schon anheim gefallen. Stattdessen wird der Suizid in einer Performance masochistischer Selbstverstümmelung kultisch sublimiert.
In einer fotografischen Inszenierung Gottfried Helnweins erhebt sich der Künstler, fäulnisschwarz und monumental wie das Mahnmal einer letzen Einsicht: “So ist Verzweiflung, diese Krankheit im Selbst, die Krankheit zum Tode. Der verzweifelte ist todkrank. Der Tod ist nicht das letzte der Krankheit, aber der Tod ist in einem fort das Letzte. Von dieser Krankheit erlöst zu werden durch den Tod ist eine Unmöglichkeit, denn die Krankheit und deren Qual und der Tod ist gerade, nicht sterben zu können.”

So ist die Geschichte der Moderne nicht zuletzt auch eine Erfolgsgeschichte der Melancholie und des Eindringens ihres schwarzen Spuks in die letzten Paradiese des Seins- und Weltvertrauens. "

"His paintings represent a fusion of historic and contemporary artistic practices, uniting the Romantic aesthetic of Caspar David Friedrich, the political radicalism of Viennese Actionists and the technical
precision of the photorealists of the 1970’s. Although often based on photographs, or inspired by film stills, his paintings are built up in fine layers of traditional oil paint and represent a degree of
technical accomplishment rarely seen in European academies. He uses this technical accomplishment and finesse to carry across the strong political message contained in his art."