Gottfried Helnwein | PRESS | International Press | HELNWEIN AT THE CRAWFORD MUNICIPAL ART GALLERY

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.


		02. August 2004 eircom.net HELNWEIN AT THE CRAWFORD MUNICIPAL ART GALLERY 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.


		Using his trademark methodology - starting from digital and photographic tools and source material, and finishing with Old Master techniques on canvas, these are far from 'literal' transcriptions of these views, which Helnwein has deliberately depopulated. Super seductive, hyperrealist images these paintings are a relatively late development in his near 40-year career and well worth taking some time out to see. Currently showing at the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery.