"Time" magazine commissions Robert Rauschenberg and Gottfried Helnwein to design covers with Deng Xiaoping.

1984 "Helnwein", the film by Peter Hajek, opens the Austrian Week in the Berlin film festival, "Berlinale".
The film is awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize and in the same year wins the Eduard Rhein Prize and the Golden Kader of the city of Vienna for outstanding camera work.

Helnwein meets Walt Disney artist Carl Barks, creator of Donald Duck. Helnwein maintains that he learned more about art and life from Donald Duck than from all the schools he ever attended.

Helnwein meets Walt Disney artist Carl Barks

A self-portrait collage as a contribution to the "1984 - Orwell and the Present Day" exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna.

In December 1984, The Hindustan Times publishes an article on Helnwein.
"Gottfried Helnwein: Called the 'Razor Blade Rembrandt' or 'the Boris Karloff of Art', Helnwein is the man most Austrians love to hate. He schocks people. His paintings are scenes from every-day life, highly realistic, but there's a sharp, morbid streak in many of them. Children with razors, faces under extreme stress or in fear or in pain. Intensly human, often savage, but always stunning.
I found him to be a sensitive, warm human being..."

Begining of the friendship with Marlene Dietrich.
Gottfried and Renate Helnwein were amongst the few people that Marlene invited to her home in Paris, and stayed in close contact with until the end of her life ...

“Kunst und Integration”.
Group show

His self-portrait is shown in the exhibition "Köpfe und Gesichter" (Heads and Faces) in the Darmstadt Kunsthalle.

Helnwein's self-portrait is on the cover of the Italian news magazine "L'Espresso".

The office of Soviet foreign minister Gromyko tries to acquire Helnwein's portrait of Gromyko, which appeared as a "Time" cover.
But the painting is already part of a collection in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

1983 One-man show at Munich Stadtmuseum .
The exhibition is seen by more than a hundred thousand people ...

ZDF and ORF (German and Austrian National Television) produce the film "Helnwein", directed by Peter Hajek. In Los Angeles Helnwein meets Muhammad Ali, who appears in the film.

Bavarian Television produces a film portrait of Helnwein directed by Hans-Dieter Hartl.
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"Rettet die Donau" (Save the Danube).
- the Austrian art-collector and patron Hans Dichand finances a campaign with large bill- boards of Helnwein's artwork throughout Austria against the destruction of the last great riverside meadowland woods in Europe by the Austrian power-station company Donau- kraftwerke AG.

Helnwein meets with Andy Warhol at his factory in New York .
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1982 Helnwein marries Renate Kurrer in Vienna.
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March 25, Helnwein's son Ali Elvis Donald Dagobert Lancelot is born.
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The Higher College of Visual Art (Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften) in Hamburg offers Helnwein a Chair.
Helnwein demands no tests and no age-restrictions as pre-requisites for his students. He wants the freedom to accept anybody, including children. The college rejectes this demand as being against university regulations and Helnwein declines the offer ...

Meets the Rolling Stones in London. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ron Wood, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman pose for Helnwein.
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For "Zeit" magazine, Peter Sager writes a cover story about Helnwein.
The self-portrait as a screaming blinded man is used for this cover story and later for the cover of the Scorpions' LP "Blackout".