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".

In the National Austrian radio talk-show "Teestunde", Helnwein uses obscenities to insult Sam T. Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb.
He further accuses Elvis' physician of murder and criticizes the education system, referring to the high number of student-suicides. Helnwein calls upon students to simply stay away from school.
The director of Austrian Radio (ORF) is appalled and cancels the show ...

Helnwein meets Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf.
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Helnwein's Self-portrait is the cover of the Scorpions album Blackout.
Klaus Albrecht Schroeder, director of the Albertina in Vienna, said 1987 about this often reproduced image: "It is hard to deny, that the aggression- and vulnerability-symbolism of Helnwein's well-known and multiple-varied selfportrait of a bandaged head, eyes blinded by surgical forks and mouth opened wide to form a scream; is something of a self-evident metaphor for an elementary human stipulation of today's existence." ...

Helnwein's portrait of Kennedy makes the cover of "Time" for the 20th anniversary of the President's death.

1981 Helnwein meets Andy Warhol in Vienna.
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