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, The Child: Works by Gottfried Helnwein 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.

This exhibition contains approximately 19 paintings, 13 drawings and watercolors, and over 20 photographs spanning a 35-year period from the early 1970s until the present. The photographs are of two types: independent works of art and others that serve to document earlier important performance art pieces (Aktions), and large-scale installation art works.

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