Maria Lassnig (8 September 1919 – 6 May 2014) was an Austrian artist known for her painted self-portraits and her theory of "body awareness".Attias, Lauri
''Maria Lassnig''
, ''Frieze'', May 1996. She was the first female artist to win the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1988 and was awarded the

Austrian Decoration for Science and Art The Austrian Decoration for Science and Art () is a state decoration of the Republic of Austria and forms part of the Orders, decorations, and medals of Austria, Austrian national honours system. History The "Austrian Decoration for Science a ...

in 2005. Lassnig lived and taught in Vienna from 1980 until her death.

Early life

Maria Lassnig was born in Kappel am Krappfeld, Austria, on 8 September 1919.Karen Rosenberg (27 March 2014)
A Painter, Well Aware, Takes Twists and Turns
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', Retrieved 16 April 2014. Her mother gave birth to her out of wedlock and later married a much older man, but their relationship was troubled and Lassnig was raised mostly by her grandmother.Randy Kennedy (9 May 2014)
Maria Lassnig, Painter of Self From the Inside Out, Dies at 94
''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna during World War II.

Work

Lassnig is credited with helping to introduce Informalism and Tachisme into postwar Austrian art. In the 1950s, Lassnig was part of the ''Hundsgruppe'' ("Dog Pack") group, which also included Arnulf Rainer, Ernst Fuchs,

Anton Lehmden Anton Lehmden (2 January 1929 – 7 August 2018) was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Lehmden was a co-founder, together with Ernst Fuchs, Maître Leherb (Helmut Leherb), Rudolf Hausner, Arik Brauer, Fritz Janschka and Wo ...

Arik Brauer Arik Brauer (; 4 January 1929 – 24 January 2021) was an Austrian painter, printmaker, poet, dancer, singer-songwriter, stage designer, architect, and academic teacher. Brauer, from a family of Jewish emigrants, grew up in Vienna under the N ...

and Wolfgang Hollegha. The works of the group were influenced by

abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

and

action painting Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical ...

. In 1951 Lassnig traveled to Paris with Arnulf Rainer where they organized the exhibition ''Junge unifigurative Malerei'' at the Kärnten Art Association. In Paris she also met the surrealist artist

André Breton André Robert Breton (; ; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...

and the poets Paul Celan and Benjamin Péret.Moyer, Carrie
"Maria Lassnig: The Pitiless Eye"
Art in America, Retrieved 16 April 2014. Though Lassnig began her career painting abstract works, she always created self-portraits. One of her earliest was ''Expressive Self-Portrait'' (1945), which she painted only weeks after leaving Vienna.Lane, Mar
"MoMA PS1 Shows 'Body Awareness'"
''The Wall Street Journal'', Retrieved 17 April 2014. In 1948 Lassnig coined the term "body consciousness" (''Körpergefühlmalerei'' in her native German) to describe her practice. In this style, Lassnig only depicted the parts of her body that she actually felt as she worked. As such, many of her self-portraits depict figures that are missing body parts or use unnatural colours. The shading of the grotesque forms then become a code for interpreting her "''Körpergefühlmalerei."'' For example, red often acts as the most significant color in her paintings, sometimes suggesting pain but often just intense feeling or strain. By the 1960s Lassnig turned away from abstract painting altogether and began to focus more wholly on the human body and psyche. Roberta Smith (22 November 2002)
Art in review; Maria Lassnig
''

''. Since that time she created hundreds of self-portraits. Most of her work in the 1970s and 1980s paired her own image with objects, animals or other people, frequently with a blocked out or averted gaze, suggesting interiority. From 1968 to 1980, Lassnig lived in New York City. From 1970 to 1972 she studied animated film at the

School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by Silas ...

in New York City. During this time she made six short films, including ''Selfportrait'' (1971) and ''Couples'' (1972)."Maria Lassnig Master CV"
Petzel Gallery, Retrieved 17 April 2014. Her most famous film, however, ''Kantate'' (also known as ''The Ballad of Maria Lassnig''), was produced in 1992 when she was seventy-three years old."Maria Lassnig"
Art Films, Retrieved 17 April 2014. Kantate (1992) depicts a filmic self-portrait of the artist set to songs and music. In 1980, she returned to become a professor at the Vienna University of Applied Arts, becoming the first female professor of painting in a German-speaking country. She was a chair at the University until 1997. In 1997 she also published a book of her drawings entitled ''Die Feder ist die Schwester des Pinsels'' (or ''The Pen is the Sister of the Paintbrush''). She continued to paint, and in 2008 made her provocative self-portrait, ''You or Me,'' which exemplifies the often confrontational nature of her works. In 2013 Lassnig received the Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement at the 55th Venice Biennale.

Gallery

Maria lassnig selbstportraet expressiv 1945.jpg, Painting "Selbstporträt expressiv" (Expressive Self-Portrait), 1945 Maria lassnig dicke gruene 1961.jpg, Painting "Dicke Grüne" (Fat Green), 1961 Maria lassnig selbstportraet mit stab 1971.jpg, painting "Selbstporträt mit Stab" (Self-Portrait with Stick), 1971 Maria lassnig ohne titel 1981.jpg, Drawing "Untitled (Screaming Woman)", 1981 Maria-lassnig-zwei-arten-zu-sein-doppelselbstportraet-2000.tif , Painting "Zwei Arten zu sein (Doppelselbstporträt)" – Two Ways of Being (Double Self-Portrait), 2000

Exhibitions

Well into her sixties and late in her career, Lassnig began to receive widespread recognition, especially in Europe. She represented Austria at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

with Valie Export in 1980.bka.gv.at
In 1996 a retrospective of her work was held at the

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

. She participated in

documenta Documenta (often stylized documenta) is an Art exhibition, exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. Documenta was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgarte ...

in both 1982 and 1997. For the 2005/2006 season at the

Vienna State Opera The Vienna State Opera (, ) is a historic opera house and opera company based in Vienna, Austria. The 1,709-seat Renaissance Revival venue was the first major building on the Vienna Ring Road. It was built from 1861 to 1869 following plans by ...

she designed the large-scale (176 m²) ''Breakfast with Ear'' for the ongoing series "Safety curtain", conceived by museum in progress. In 2008 an exhibition of her recent paintings was shown at the

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Westminster, Greater London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Galler ...

which also travelled to the Contemporary Arts Center in the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (2009). The exhibition was curated by

Julia Peyton-Jones Dame Julia Peyton-Jones (born 18 February 1952) is a British curator and gallery director, currently Senior Global Director at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in London, Paris and Salzburg. She formerly worked as Co-Director of the Serpentine Gallery i ...

and Hans Ulrich Obrist in association with Rebecca Morrill and featured thirty canvases and seven films. Lassnig's later solo exhibitions included ''It's art that keeps one ever young'', Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany (2010), 'Maria Lassnig. Films’, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York NY, (2011), and The Location of Pictures, Universalmuseum Joanneum; Graz (2012). as well as Deichtorhallen; Hamburg (2013). MoMA PS1 held a major exhibition in 2014 of works, many of which that had not previously been seen in the United States before including 50 paintings, filmic works and a selection of watercolors. They have continued to show her films, as in the 2018 exhibition ''Maria Lassnig: New York Films 1970-1980.'' Since 2014, the year of her death, her work was shown at the Fondacio Tapies in Barcelona (2015), Tate Liverpool (2016), the Albertina, Vienna (2017), and the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2017), the National Gallery in Prague (2018), Kunstmuseum Basel (2018), and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2019). Lassnig's work was included in the 2022 exhibition ''Women Painting Women'' at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Collections

Lassnig's work is held in the following permanent collections: *

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York * Albertina, Vienna

Legacy

Critics have pointed to the influence that Lassnig's work had on contemporary artists like Nicole Eisenman, Dana Schutz, Thomas Schütte, and

Amy Sillman Amy Sillman (born 1955) is a New York-based visual artist, known for process-based paintings that move between abstraction and figuration, and engage nontraditional media including animation, zines and installation.Farago, Jason''The New York T ...

. Founded in 2015, the Maria Lassnig Foundation is dedicated to propagating the extensive oeuvre of the artist and to ensure that Lassnig's legacy is secured over the long term.

Recognition

*Creative Artists Public Service Program Fellowship in the field of film of The New York City Council on the Arts (1973/1974) * Grand Austrian State Prize for Visual Arts (1988) * Honorary doctor, University of Klagenfurt (1999 / 2013) *Roswitha Haftmann Prize (2002) * Rubens Prize of the City of Siegen (2002) *Max Beckmann Prize (2004) *

(2005) *Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (with Marisa Merz) at the 55th Venice Biennial (2013)

''Sleeping with a Tiger'' biopic

A biopic on her life was made by Anja Salomonowitz in 2024. Titled as '' Sleeping with a Tiger'', the film will have world premiere in February 2024, as part of the

74th Berlin International Film Festival The 74th annual Berlin International Film Festival, usually called the Berlinale, took place between 15 and 25 February 2024 in Berlin, Germany. Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong'o was named the Jury President for the main competition. This ye ...

, in Forum.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lassnig, Maria 1919 births 2014 deaths 20th-century Austrian painters 21st-century Austrian painters 21st-century Austrian women artists Burials at the Vienna Central Cemetery Austrian modern painters People from Sankt Veit an der Glan District Recipients of the Grand Austrian State Prize Recipients of the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art Theodor Körner Prize recipients Austrian contemporary artists Neo-expressionist artists 20th-century Austrian women painters 21st-century women painters