In actual fact, I want to tell you without misrepresentation, the whole story of Philhelm, which begins in Alsace (It was still a Germanic country and will become French only in 1678!) in the castle of Lichtenberg, on April 23rd 1616, when the seven-year-old Balthasar Helmlinger, loses the Monogram of his eponymy descendant. This ordinary but nevertheless very serious incident in the distant past will set in motion the artistic calling of one of his descendants, ten generations later! This contemporary painter, born in Strasbourg in 1943, has only exhibited his work twice in his life (1999 and 2001) and only at the “International Biennial Event of Contemporary Art of Florence” which awarded him in 1999 the Prize of the City of Florence. So that the ordinary people be completely disorientated, so that it will let the story of the past enter him torpidly, by going back the furthermost possible or else it will never pierce the heart of his paintings, to seek there the secret causes of things. I will tell some day your latent births Black : violence, war, death, tomb, histories.
Red : eroticism, sex, love, life, mythologies.
Yellow : music, curve, peace, symbol, stars.
Blue : language, imprint, fish, Gods. I decline the colours in correspondence with the images and the original writings to find a small story of the past in which my monogram would have always been present as an archetype. Since a few years, I have tried to reveal this revival because the Gods came one day to meet me! They deigned to present me their messengers as heroes accompanied by their sphinx. Let them forgive me if I dare to mention them in the joy of my heart, even if I have no false shame in asking them for forgiveness. If I try to revive by its legends a few bits of an immortal and sacred lost knowledge, I owe it only to the works of numerous existing or missing archaeologists and historians of whom I borrowed here and there a few scraps. I make no vanity of my work. Had I to believe that I would never produce anything good nor beautiful in my whole life, I would nonetheless feel a real and deep joy in tasting what I would recognise and admire as beautiful and great in others, had they been Etruscan, Cretan, Assyrian or Sumerian. Philhelm
The belated Monogramist of Strasbourg. |
In actual fact, I want to tell you without misrepresentation, the whole story of Philhelm, which begins in Alsace (It was still a Germanic country and will become French only in 1678!) in the castle of Lichtenberg, on April 23rd 1616, when the seven-year-old Balthasar Helmlinger, loses the Monogram of his eponymy descendant. This ordinary but nevertheless very serious incident in the distant past will set in motion the artistic calling of one of his descendants, ten generations later! This contemporary painter, born in Strasbourg in 1943, has only exhibited his work twice in his life (1999 and 2001) and only at the “International Biennial Event of Contemporary Art of Florence” which awarded him in 1999 the Prize of the City of Florence. So that the ordinary people be completely disorientated, so that it will let the story of the past enter him torpidly, by going back the furthermost possible or else it will never pierce the heart of his paintings, to seek there the secret causes of things. |