Aktion "Gifttanz" (Poison-Dance), Vienna.
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Self-portrait with Smiling-Aid (Selbstportrait mit Schmunzelhilfe).
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Aktion "Pinocchio".
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Aktion "Hallo Dulder!".
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First cover for the political and cultural magazine "Profil".
"Suicide in Austria" (Selbstmord in Österreich), showing a little girl slashing her wrists. - many readers are outraged and cancel their subscriptions. ...

1972 .
A Helnwein exhibition in the Gallery of the "House of the Press" in Vienna, headquarters of Austrias biggest newspapers, is discontinued after three days because of strong protests by visitors and employees and finally strike threats by the workers council ...

Aktion "Sorgenkind" in Vienna.
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Works on a series of pen and ink, crayon and pencil drawings.

Scratches and scrapes a series of self-portraits and child-photos with luminous stigma.

1971 Kardinal König Prize.

In the exhibition "Zoetus" at the Kunsthalle "Künstlerhaus" in Vienna unidentified people put stickers with the words "Entartete Kunst" (degenerate art) on Helnwein's paintings.

Founding member of the artist group "Zoetus" in Vienna.
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At the opening of an exhibition at Galerie D in Mödling, near Vienna, the mayor has Helnwein's paintings confiscated by the police.
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First performances ("Aktions") with children. At first in his studio and later in the streets of Vienna.
In his essay "The Divided Self", art-historian Peter Gorsen states: "As shown by his many actions with children in public, the group portrait with children has become a permanent subject for Helnwein. His commitment to the rights of children has nothing to do with "infantomania", as manifested in a socially isolated "children's culture", in a commercialized "children's media", in the child as a pedagogical subject, and in the ideological transfiguration of one's own childhood.

Helnwein must also be set apart from Viennese Actionism as he does not reduce the child's body to mere aesthetic material (as in the "material actions" of Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, and Otto Muehl), but instead endows it with a symbolic function in representing defenceless, sacrificed man. The sexualistic concept of the child in (Freud-influenced) "Viennese Actionism" is countered by the moralist and utopian Helnwein with the child as a sexless salvation figure. The tendency to a patriarchal transfiguration and idealization of an innocent, sacrificing child-man embracing children and artists as the sole creative interest group is the main feature distinguishing Helnwein's world of pictures from the pan-sexualism and libido anarchy of the Vienna action group of old." ...

1970 Prize of the Academy for Fine Art, Vienna (Meisterschul-Preis).

Works on a series of hyper-realistic paintings of wounded children..
Intensive research into the various forms of trivial aesthetics such as comics, advertising, and film; puts this experience into his work. Watercolor: "Unkeusches Kind" (Unchaste Child), "Peinlich" (Embarrassing), "Gemeines Kind" (Mean Child), "Der Eingriff" (Intrusion). First oil paintings: "Mutter, Du hier?" (Mother, Is It You?); "Führer, wir danken Dir!" (Führer, We Thank You!). ...

Aktion "Die Akademie brennt" (Academy Burning).
With two fellow students and several hired activists, Helnwein stages a rebellion at the Akademy of Fine Arts in Vienna. The trigger was the refusal of the professors to allow student representatives a say in the entrance examinations. The event is carefully planned and choreographed by Helnwein. Professors are locked in, doors are set a blaze, the building is filled with smoke, paint splattered on the walls, windows smashed and serious damage is done. Panic breakes out and Riot police moves in. The "student revolt at the Academy of Fine Arts " makes the headlines in the Austrian media. The next day Helnwein and his colleagues get picked up by custodians of the university and charged.
Hertha Firnberg, Austrian minister of art and science, declares their action to be political and all investigations and criminal proceedings are dropped. ...

Helnwein marries Ilse R.
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First one man show at Galerie Atrium, Vienna.
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First photographic self-portraits with bandages and surgical instruments.
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