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.
Philhelm declines the colors in a correspondence with the images and original writings to a small history of the past, in wich his monogram was always present as an archetype. This revival for a few years, he has tried to reveal it because the Gods came one day to its meeting ! They deigned to present him their messengers like a hero accompanied with their sphinges : Let them forgive him, if he dares to quote them in the enjoyement of his heart, even if he put no bad shame to ask them for grace. If he tries to make reappear by its legends, some bits of a lost knowledge, and really immortal and sacred, he owes it only with work of fort many archaeologists and historians. He makes no vanity of his work. If he had his whole life, believe not produce anything good and beautiful, he feels no less real joy and deep taste that he recognizes and admires beautiful and great at others, had they been Etruscan, Cretan, Assyrian or Sumerian ?