1993 One-man show "Faces" at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn.
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Helnwein meets James Brown in Germany, who sits for a portrait photo-session .
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One man-show at the Josef Albers Museum, Quadrat Bottrop, Moderne Galerie.

"Faces", one-man show in the Munich Stadtmuseum.

"Aktion-Reaktion" (Action-Reaction) exhibition of the Austrian painters Rainer, Nitsch, Brus, and Helnwein, works from the Schömer collection, at the Foundation Fiecht, Austria.

In the Ludwig Forum in Aachen the "48 Portraits" are shown in the "Künstlerportraits" exhibition.

1992 First one-man show at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco.
Martin Muller, founder of Modernism San Francisco, detected Helnwein's work at Basel Art fair some years before. Since 1992 Modernism San Francisco represents Helnwein in the US ...

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art shows Helnwein's self-portait "Black Mirror".
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One-man show at the Pfalzgalerie Museum in Kaiserslautern and at the Kunstmuseum in Thun.

Helnwein meets Lou Reed in London.

Helnwein's poster for the theatre play "Jeanmaire" by Swiss poet and playwright Urs Widmer causes tumult in Switzerland.
The police bans the poster from being displayed, the Swiss parliament discusses the scandal and the sunday-preacher of national Television dedicates his weekly sermon to condem Helnwein's painting ...

One-man show, Goethe-Institut, Centre culturell allemand, Paris.
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Helnwein meets with Roy Disney at his Irish castle in Co. Cork.
Helnwein briefs Roy Disney on the preparation of the Carl Barks museum retrospective and the publication of the book "Wer ist Carl Barks?" (Who is Carl Barks?), and discusses with him the influence of Walt Disney's aesthetics on the culture of the 20th century.

Helnwein meets Roy Lichtenstein in New York.

1991 Installation "Kindskopf" (Child's Head) in the Minoriten Church in Krems, Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum (Museum of Lower Austria).
Helnwein paints a 6x4 m (18x12 feet) child's head for the apse of the early Gothic basilica. Ten days before the opening he has his children Amadeus, Ali Elvis and Mercedes paint large-format canvases which he then arranges in the basilica ...

Karel VII Schwarzenberg, chancellor of Václav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, invites Gottfried Helnwein to Prag .
Schwarzenberg receives Helnwein in his office at the The Prague Castle, seat of the president of the Czech Republic and discusses Helnwein's work ...

Works on the "48 Portraits".
a series of 48 monochrome red paintings of women (oil on canvas) as a counterpart to Gerhard Richter's "48 Portraits" of 1971, which depict only men in monochrome grey.
The cycle of paintings is first shown in the Galerie Koppelmann in Cologne, and later aquired by collector Peter Ludwig for the Ludwig Museum in Aachen.

Helnwein meets Alice Schwarzer, the leading contemporary German feminist, while working on his cycle "48 portraits", which marks the beginning of their friendship .
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Cologne art Collector and patron Prof. Fritz Gruber and his wife Renate invite Helnwein to join their circle of friends (artists, writers, photographers, curators and intellectuals) who meet on a regular basis at his salons in his villa in Cologne.
Later some of the friends, amongst them Brian Eno, Alice Schwarzer and Alfred Biolek, rent a river-boat, originally built for King Faruk of Egypt and embarke on several journeys on the Nile. Hence the group called itself "The Nile-Society" (Nil-Gesellschaft) ...

Helnwein meets David Bowie in Los Angeles.
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