The theme of violence and the theme “he as victim” proceed from Beckmann’s early work from 1907 till today. Bruce Naumann, Marcel Odenbach, Jeff Wall und Gottfried Helnwein changed the artistic means radically but not the theme itself. Helnwein’s fascinating oeuvre embraces total antipodes. Helnwein is an artist of uncompromising expression: The trivial, for example the Disney-culture, alternates with visions of spiritual doom, the divine in the child contrasts with horror-images of child-abuse. But violence remains to be his basic theme, - the physical and the emotional suffering, inflicted by one human being unto another.