1969 to 1973 Helnwein studies painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
It is the same University where in 1907 and 1908, a young struggling artist by the name of Adolf Hitler was twice denied admission for art studies. ...

Helnwein begins to work on a series of hyper-realistic watercolor-paintings of bandaged and wounded children.
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Helnwein travels to Istanbul.
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1968 Walks with his friend Manfred Deix from Venice to Vienna over several days without eating or sleeping.
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Helnwein cuts his hand with a razor blade and with his own blood paints a picture of Adolf Hitler ("Führer"). The Professors are discomposed and the school administration confiscates the painting.
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1966 First "Aktions" for small audiences.
Helnwein cuts his face and hands with razor blades, etching- and wood-engraving tools. First bandaging happenings. ...

1965 to 1969 Studies at the "Higher Federal Institution for Graphic Education and Experimentation" in Vienna .
("Höhere Bundes-Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, Wien" ) ...

1960 - 1965 Helnwein tries different high-schools but has no idea what this is all about and fails completely.
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Strict Roman Catholic upbringing.
Kindergarten with nuns, becomes altar boy, goes to school with the "School-brothers", Jesuits... ...

1955 First year at school with the Roman Catholic "School-Brothers".
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1954 His father gives him one of the first German Disney comic-books.
And Helnwein has his Damascus experience:
"Opening my first Donald Duck comic book felt like seeing the daylight again for someone who has been trapped underground by a mine-disaster for many days. I squinted cautiously because my eyes hadn't gotten used to the dazzling, bright sun of Duckburg yet, and I greedily sucked the fresh breeze that came drifting over from Uncle Scrooge's money bin into my dusty lungs. I was back home again, in a decent world where one could get flattened by steam-rollers and perforated by bullets without serious harm. A world in which the people still looked proper, with yellow beaks or black knobs instead of noses. And it was here that I met the man who would forever change my life - a man who, as the Austrian poet H.C. Artmann put it, is the only person today that has something worthwhile saying: Donald Duck." ...

Helnwein spends his childhood going back and forth between depressed post-war Vienna and the farm of his grandparents in the countryside of rural Lower Austria.
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His father Joseph Helnwein works in the Austrian post administration, and his mother Margarethe is a housewife.
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Born October 8, 1948 in Vienna.
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