MEAM presents Gottfried Helnwein, La Guerra Continúa-Helnwein & Goya, an unprecedented dialogue between two masters separated by two centuries: Francisco de Goya and Gottfried Helnwein. Facing the roughly 80 etchings of The Disasters of War, created between 1810 and 1816, Helnwein responds with his series of the same name, begun in 2007, a cycle of paintings and mixed-media works on violence, exploitation and the destruction of childhood.
Between Goya’s rawness and Helnwein’s theatricality, the exhibition questions our way of looking in the digital age, saturated with images that leave no perversion out. When is it legitimate to depict horror? What happens when violence becomes pure spectacle? Helnwein incorporates comic elements, manga girls and characters such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse into hyperrealistic scenes that catch us “with our eyes wide open.”
Goya risked everything in the time of the Inquisition. For Helnwein, it is an inner necessity.
An essential encounter with art that disturbs, moves and reminds us that kindred spirits exist.
