Examining his imagery from the 1970s to the present , one sees influences as diverse as Bosch , Goya , John Heartfield , Beuys and Mickey Mouse , all filtered through a postwar Viennese childhood . ' Helnwein 's oeuvre embraces total antipodes : The trivial 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 . ' 1988 in remembrance of Kristallnacht ( Cristal Night ) 50 years earlier , Helnwein erected a large installation in the city center of Cologne , between Ludwig Museum and the Cologne Cathedral : '' Selektion – Neunter November Nacht ( " Selektion – Ninth November Night ) '' A four-meter-high , hundred-meter-long picture lane in which the artist recalls the events of Reichskristallnacht , the actual beginning of the Holocaust , on 9 November 1938 . He confronts the passersby with larger-than-life children 's faces lined up in a seemingly endless row , as if for concentration camp selection . Just days into the exhibit , these portraits were vandalized by unknown persons , symbolically cutting the throats of the depicted children 's faces . Helnwein consciously left the panels with the gashes and included them into the presentation , because he decided it made the work stronger and more relevant
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Gottfried Helnwein