Helnwein's preoccupation with the dark side of modern history, including its abuse of images, has never left him. He did a whole series of paintings (the Legion show includes a couple) so dark as to appear imageless. But he intended them not as mirrors of dark times but as counterthrusts to the aggressive reach of so much contemporary culture.
Despite the grotesquerie it contains, the Legion show also has elements of pathos.

Helnwein nodded yes when asked whether he has made a theme of innocence. "It's a dangerous word, it's so abused and misused, but yes that's probably the basic essence of what I'm interested in."
"As soon as somebody's grown up they have so many issues," he said. "When you look at a person -- what social level, what country they're from, what fashion they affect -- all this stuff comes in, but I'm interested in the stage of a human being where it's not so important whether it's a male or female, before we can tell any social background or anything, it's just ... abstract, almost."
...Probably few visitors will appreciate the detachment in Helnwein's work. They will more likely respond to his concern with the power of images. We willingly subject ourselves to their power every day without really understanding it. If nothing else, his pictures, no matter how confrontational, stand still and permit us, even defy us, to understand how they work upon us. ...

When I was in seventh grade, I was always bullied. Now in eight grade, the bullying has become worse. They make fun of me, throw things at me, kick me, hit me, and do other violent things. It was a waste of time complaining to the teacher when I couldn't tolerate it. They'd throw my textbooks at me and harass me for telling the teacher. I have no friends who sympathize with me in class. My close friends in clubs outside school have learned to hate me, too. I'm too tired to hold out any longer. The world's not right for me.
...

Adding To The Discussion Gottfried Helnwein is an artist whose work - "giant color portraits of stillborn babies, paintings that merge Nazi-archive photographs with pictures Helnwein has taken, enigmatic portrayals of apparently wounded or menaced children" - tends to provoke strong reactions, and in recent years, several individuals have expressed their displeasure with some of his images by defacing them. Helnwein confesses to being initially startled by the vandalism, but these days, he has decided that the viewer has as much to contribute to the larger discussion as the artist, and if people are moved to destroy what he has created, he can at least salute their passion. ...

Har du nogle kunstneriske forbilleder? I så fald, hvem? Og har det påvirket din tegnestil?
Uuh, der er mange! Hmm, nogle af mine store forbilleder er Ashley Wood, Gotfried Helnwein, Cam De Leon og selvfølgelig min mester fra tegneskolen her i Viborg som har betydet min absolut største fremgang Artem Alexeev, men også folk som Jean-Michel Basquiat og Jackson Pollock .... ser jeg utroligt meget op til! Jeg har 100´vis af forbilleder, men dette må regnes for nogle af de største! De har påvirket mig rigtig meget!
Også musikalsk har jeg mange forbilleder, de afspejles så til gengæld sjældent i mine billeder, men er folk alligevel intereserede er der nogle links i min profil til lidt af hvert. ...

Gottfried Helnwein (Viena, 1948
1948: Nace en Viena
1969/73: Estudia pintura en la Academia de Fine Art en Viena y realiza sus
primeras exposiciones para audiencias pequeñas.
1979: Protesta contra el psiquiatra forense número uno de Austria, Dr. Gross, que admitió en una entrevista que en la era Nazi, él había envenenado a centenares de niños.
1985: Se muda a Alemania, vive y trabaja en un castillo cerca de Cologne, comienzan a producir los cuadros que se componen de varias piezas, Helnwein examina de cerca áreas del taboo y aborda términos tales como arte sub-humana, degenerada y vida indigna de vida. En este mismo año Rudolf Hausner propone a Helnwein como su sucesor y como cabecilla de los profesores para los pintores en la academia de artes visuales en Viena. ...

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Child: Works by Gottfried Helnwein
31. jul. 2004 - 28. nov. 2004
Lincoln Park, San Francisco
http://www.thinker.org/legion/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?exhibitionkey=407 ...

Al famoso museo Legion of Honor di San Francisco è stata inaugurata la prima mostra personale negli Stati Uniti dell’artista austriaco. 19 dipinti, più di 20 foto, 13 disegni ed acquarelli documentano il percorso artistico di Helnwein (*Vienna 1948) dagli anni ’70 fino ad oggi. ...

San Francisco Chronicle - Monday August 9 -
Gottfried Helnwein likes to stand shoulder to shoulder with museum patrons when they look at his work, but he doesn't bask in his own glory. ...

The Child: Works by Gottfried Helnwein
31.7. - 28.11.
Fine Arts Museum of San Franscico, 2501 Irving Street (at 26th Avenue) , 94122 San Francisco, CA USA

The Child: Works by Gottfried Helnwein ...

Internationally known Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein will have his first one-man museum exhibition in the United States, opening at the Legion of Honor in the summer of 2004. The exhibition, Gottfried Helnwein: The Child features a major theme that has appeared in his work over the last 35 years. For Helnwein, the child is the symbol of innocence, but also innocence betrayed. In today’s world, the malevolent forces of war, poverty, sexual exploitation, and the numbing predatory influence of modern media assault the virtue of children. Helnwein, who grew up in Austria in the somber atmosphere of a defeated country in the years following World War II, has an emotional tie to children who have been robbed of experiencing childhood without trauma. ...