Helmut Wenske was born in Hanau, close to Frankfurt/Main, in 1940. As a child he experienced the bombing of his home town by allied forces. His father died as a young soldier on the eastern front and his mother could not provide a stable home. In the mid 1950ies he got involed with Hanau’s vibrant rock’n’roll scene that focused on bars and clubs frequented by American GIs. The rebellious spirit of the early youth culture had a deep impact on his further life.
After trainings as a window dresser and porcelain painter Wenske’s artistic talents opened him doors for numerous jobs, as painter for department stores and striptease venues, as chapbook illustrator and poster artist. In 1967 he came into contact with Bellaphone records in Frankfurt and became well known for his record cover and poster illustrations for some of his favorite bands. Especially intense was his association with the progressive rockband Nektar. Later his paintings and commissioned works were frequently used for book covers of science fiction and fantasy writers, among them Philip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem.
For some time he used psychedelic drugs to access the darker corners of his creative mind. Although his works were exhibited and praised and sometimes compared with Dali, he never became part of the greater art world and followed his own whims. His only closer association with another artist was with the Swiss surrealist HR Giger.
By the end of the 1970ies Wenske came to the conlusion that he had exhausted what he wanted to say as a painter and his productivity decreased. Starting with the autobiographical account Rock´n´Roll Tripper in 1983, that he published under his pen name Chris Hyde, be became instead a chronicler of the rock’n’roll era in Germany. He is still an active and central figure of the rock scene in Hanau.