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 The Grand Austrian State Prize () is a decoration given annually by Austria to an artist for exceptional work. The recipient must be an Austrian citizen with a permanent residence in Austria. It was originally created in 1950 by then education mi ...

in 1988 and was awarded the

Austrian Decoration for Science and Art The Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (german: Österreichisches Ehrenzeichen für Wissenschaft und Kunst) is a state decoration of the Republic of Austria and forms part of the Austrian national honours system. History The "Austrian D ...

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

Early life

Maria Lassnig was born in

Kappel am Krappfeld Kappel am Krappfeld ( sl, Kapela na Grobniškem polju) is a town in the district of Sankt Veit an der Glan in the Austrian state of Carinthia. It is the birthplace of Maria Lassnig. Geography Kappel lies about 25 km northeast of Klagenfurt ...

, 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'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', 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'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

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

Work

Lassnig is credited with helping to introduce

Informalism Informalism or Art Informel is a Painting, pictorial movement from the 1943–1950s, that includes all the Abstract painting, abstract and Action painting, gestural tendencies that developed in France and the rest of Europe during the World War ...

and

Tachisme __NOTOC__ Tachisme (alternative spelling: Tachism, derived from the French word ''tache'', stain) is a French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The term is said to have been first used with regards to the movement in 19 ...

into postwar Austrian art. In the 1950s, Lassnig was part of the ''Hundsgruppe'' ("Dog Pack") group, which also included

Arnulf Rainer Arnulf Rainer (born 8 December 1929) is an Austrian painter noted for his abstract informal art. Rainer was born in Baden, Austria. During his early years, Rainer was influenced by Surrealism. In 1950, he founded the ''Hundsgruppe'' (''dog grou ...

, 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 Wol ...

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

abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

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 a ...

. In 1951 Lassnig traveled to Paris with

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'') o ...

and the poets

Paul Celan Paul Celan (; ; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a Romanian-born German-language poet and translator. He was born as Paul Antschel to a Jewish family in Cernăuți (German: Czernowitz), in the then Kingdom of Romania (now Chernivtsi, U ...

and

Benjamin Péret Benjamin Péret (4 July 1899 – 18 September 1959) was a French poet, Parisian Dadaist and a founder and central member of the French Surrealist movement with his avid use of Surrealist automatism. Biography Benjamin Péret was born in Rezé, ...

.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 Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position. Early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Smith studied at ...

(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 ...

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 (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

with

Valie Export Valie Export (often stylized as 'VALIE EXPORT'; born 17 May 1940) is an avant-garde Austrian artist. She is best known for provocative public performances and expanded cinema work. Her artistic work also includes video installations, computer an ...

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 Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

. She participated in

documenta ''documenta'' is an exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. The ''documenta'' was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau (Federal Horticultura ...

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

Vienna State Opera The Vienna State Opera (, ) is an 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 August S ...

she designed the large-scale (176 m²) ''Breakfast with Ear'' for the ongoing series "Safety curtain", conceived by

museum in progress museum in progress is a private art association based in Vienna. The non-profit art initiative was created in 1990 by Kathrin Messner and Josef Ortner († 2009) with the aim to develop new presentation forms for contemporary art. The projects ...

. 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, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...

which also travelled to the

Contemporary Arts Center The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) is a contemporary art museum in Cincinnati, Ohio and one of the first contemporary art institutions in the United States. The CAC is a non-collecting museum that focuses on new developments in painting, sculptur ...

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 in ...

and

Hans Ulrich Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) is a Swiss art curator, critic, and historian of art. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of ''The Interview Project'', an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is ...

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 The Lenbachhaus () is a building housing an art museum in Munich's '' Kunstareal''. The building The Lenbachhaus was built as a Florentine-style villa for the painter Franz von Lenbach between 1887 and 1891 by Gabriel von Seidl and was expa ...

, Munich, Germany (2010), 'Maria Lassnig. Films’, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York NY, (2011), and The Location of Pictures,

Universalmuseum Joanneum The Universalmuseum Joanneum is a multidisciplinary museum with buildings in several locations in the province of Styria, Austria. It has galleries and collections in many subject areas including archaeology, geology, paleontology, mineralogy, ...

; Graz (2012). as well as

Deichtorhallen The Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany, is one of Europe's largest art centers for contemporary art and photography. The two historical buildings dating from 1911 to 1913 are iconic in style, with their open steel-and-glass structures. Their archi ...

; Hamburg (2013).

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, th ...

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 The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (widely referred to as The Modern) is an art museum of post-World War II art in Fort Worth, Texas with a collection of international modern and contemporary art. Founded in 1892, The Modern is located in the c ...

Collections

Lassnig's works are held in the collection of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

. The Albertina in Vienna owns paintings by the artist as well.

Legacy

Critics have pointed to the influence that Lassnig's work had on contemporary artists like

Nicole Eisenman Nicole Eisenman (born 1965) is French-born American artist known for her oil paintings and sculptures. She has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship (1996), the Carnegie Prize (2013), and has thrice been included in the Whitney Biennial (1995, 20 ...

Dana Schutz Dana Schutz (born 1976 in Livonia, Michigan) is an American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Schutz is known for her gestural, figurative paintings that often take on specific subjects or narrative situations as a point of depar ...

Thomas Schütte Thomas Schütte (born 16 November 1954) is a German contemporary artist. He sculpts, creates architectural designs, and draws. He lives and works in Düsseldorf. Education From 1973 to 1981 Schütte studied art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf al ...

, and

Amy Sillman Amy Sillman (born 1955) is a New York-based 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 Times'', ...

. 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 The Grand Austrian State Prize () is a decoration given annually by Austria to an artist for exceptional work. The recipient must be an Austrian citizen with a permanent residence in Austria. It was originally created in 1950 by then education mi ...

(1988) *

Honorary doctor An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

University of Klagenfurt The University of Klagenfurt (german: Universität Klagenfurt or ''Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt'', AAU) is a federal Austrian research university and the largest research and higher education institution in the state of Carinthia. It has it ...

(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 Marisa Merz (23 May 1926 – 20 July 2019) was an Italian artist and sculptor."M ...

) at the 55th Venice Biennial (2013)

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lassnig, Maria 1919 births 2014 deaths 20th-century Austrian women artists 20th-century Austrian painters 21st-century Austrian painters 21st-century Austrian women artists Burials at the Vienna Central Cemetery 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 women painters Austrian contemporary artists Neo-expressionist artists