The Washington Post – August 3, 1981
One-man show Baumgartner Galleries, Washington 1981
CONUNDRUMS
Baumgartner Galleries, 2016 R St. NW, is introducing the work of Gottfried Helnwein, a young Viennese artist who shares what seems to be an Austrian obsession with highly detailed realism - with a surrealistic edge. Trained at the Austrian Academy, and now in the process of moving to New York, Helnwein makes figurative drawings and watercolors that are occasionally gruesome, sometimes haunting and always ambiguous. Spatial and narrative ambiguity are, in fact, the central expressive devices in Helnwein's art.
