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PUBLISHER
Friedman Benda/Barry Friedman Ltd.

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.75 x 13 in. / 80 pgs / 35 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 74   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780982911204 TRADE
List Price: $50.00 CAD $60.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

TERRITORY
*not available

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FRIEDMAN BENDA/BARRY FRIEDMAN LTD.

Gottfried Helnwein: I Was a Child

Edited by Jennifer Olshin, Janine Cirincione, Renate Helnwein. Text by Peter Frank.

Gottfried Helnwein: I Was a ChildThe artist Gottfried Helnwein (born 1948) has been known for decades as a master of provocation and technique in the visual and performing arts. While his early works were drawn from the horrors witnessed by his own generation, as well as his youth in post-World War II Austria, Helnwein's more recent paintings present more hallucinatory images of reverie, combining powerful gestures of light and shadow with depictions of the aftermath of violence, brutality and suffering. In the works gathered in this monograph, Helnwein particularly dwells on children as victims of unexplained violence (as the image used on the book's front cover conveys). I Was a Child was published for the first major exhibition of Helnwein's work in New York.

Featured image, Gottfried Helnwein's Untitled (Payton 0), 2005, is reproduced from I Was a Child.

Gottfried Helnwein: I Was a Child

STATUS: Out of print | 00/00/00

For assistance locating a copy, please see our list of recommended out of print specialists

FROM THE BOOK
"Maybe it's a defect, yet ever since my earliest childhood I have seen violence all around me, as well as the effect of violence: fear. I absorbed any piece of information I could get hold of on persecution and torture like the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, tyrannical regimes such as that of Pinochet's Chile, the Inquisition…and finally, the general mistreatment of children.
The obsession with inflicting maximum pain on others, in particular on the defenseless, that runs throughout human history has always been a mystery to me. The creativity that people develop in committing such atrocities is startling.
How can someone show anything but love and admiration to children? I have seen pictures taken by forensic doctors of children who had been tortured to death, often by their own parents, images that will not let you sleep well for a while.
That was the reason I began to paint. Aesthetics were not my primary motivation.
By the age of 18 I finally realized that art was probably the only possible way of defending myself against the impertinences of society. For me art was a weapon with which I could finally strike back."

Gottfried Helnwein, excerpted from his interview with Peter Frank in I Was a Child.

GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN MONOGRAPHS + ARTIST'S BOOKS

Gottfried Helnwein: Sleep of Reason

GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: SLEEP OF REASON

Silvana Editoriale

ISBN: 9788836648092
USD $45.00
| CAD $61

Pub Date: 10/12/2021
Active | In stock


Gottfried Helnwein: The Epiphany of the Displaced

GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: THE EPIPHANY OF THE DISPLACED

Skira

ISBN: 9788857239897
USD $80.00
| CAD $115

Pub Date: 6/2/2020
Active | In stock