Maria Lassnig

Paintings

8 September - 2 October 2004

London

In her first solo show at Hauser & Wirth London, Austrian born artist Maria Lassnig (b. 1919) will exhibit a selection of new large-scale paintings. Her work is often deeply introspective and addresses the physicality of bodily experience. Lassnig frequently locates her psychological self as subject, and works such as ‘Die Trauer’ (Mourning) and ‘Grüne Köpfe’ (Green Heads) are prime examples of her self-analytical style. However, in her new works the artist introduces the substantial body of a male sitter. This is somewhat of a departure from Lassnig’s usual preference for her self as the subject.

Lassnig describes the group of exhibited works as “drastic paintings”. They are significant expressions of her belief that “truth resides in the emotions produced within the physical shell”. Her distinct expression in the use of colour is articulated by a unique definition of the image, often treated with a playful irony and humour that characterises Lassnig’s works. However, the term “drastic“ should not be understood as an assumed category as neither Lassnig herself nor her paintings allow for classification. Lassnig’s self-titled painting styles such as ‘Body-Sensation-Painting’ (‘Körpergefühlsmalerei’) or ‘Paint-Flux’ (‘Malflüsse’) alter frequently, echoing the state of her body and mind at that particular time. She acknowledges this process, stating that

“The more tired the body is, the more realistic the painting becomes. When you are in shape, you are more aware of the body’s sensations. At the beginning, my body-awareness paintings were more linear, it was all about the body’s framework. Then some really abstract things happened, changes occurred and I paid more attention to the carnal aspect”.

After her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Lassnig lived and worked in both Paris and New York. She later returned to Vienna, and became the first female to be appointed Professor of Painting at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna. In this academic capacity, Lassnig proceeded to exert a tremendous influence upon successive generations of artists.

Lassnig’s oeuvre extends beyond painting to incorporate a body of drawings, sculptures and animated films. In recent years she has received several accolades, including the Max Beckmann and Roswitha Haftmann Awards and the Rubens Prize of Siegen. In addition to her many solo exhibitions in Austria, Germany, the USA and France, Lassnig has also participated in the Venice Biennale (1982) and in the Kassel Documenta (1982 and 1997). Even though Maria Lassnig has attained critical acclaim and received several awards for her painting, the range and significance of her work is barely known outside of German-speaking Europe. The presentation of these eight paintings in London is therefore an in-depth introduction to Maria Lassnig.

The exhibition is accompanied by a linen-bound catalogue in an edition of 500, with text by Mark Gisbourne.

About the Artist

Maria Lassnig

Born in Carinthia in Southern Austria in 1919, Maria Lassnig’s (1919 – 2014) work is based on the observation of the physical presence of the body and what she termed ‘body awareness’, or ‘Körpergefühl’ in German. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in the midst of the Second World War. Then, in post-war Europe, she quickly moved away from the state-approved academic realism in which she was trained, looking to Austria’s own avant-garde past, such as the coloration of Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele’s expressionist treatment of figuration.

Her early years were marked by experiences with various ‘isms’, including artistic currents in surrealism and automatism from the late 1940s, followed by ‘art informel’ and post-cubism in the 1950s. After moving to Paris in 1960, an innovative figuration, expressive and painterly, was beginning to emerge. In the next few years, she developed narrative paintings with one or more figures, at times borrowing from technoid forms of science fiction set in absurdly caricatured scenes. Animal-like, monstrous self-portraits emerged alongside this group of works.

In 1968, Lassnig moved to New York where her artistic work once again switched direction—she turned to external realism and painted portraits, nudes and still lifes, at times combining these with her ‘body awareness’ self-portraits. Many of her paintings, drawings and watercolors were devoted to recording her physiological states through a direct and unflinching style. Utilizing contrasting colors such as greens, pinks and blues, as well as strong body shapes to give her paintings a powerful, even drastic impact, Lassnig looked to herself, a female artist in a predominantly male world, as her primary subject.

Of her artistic process, Lassnig has said: ‘I step in front of the canvas naked, as it were. I have no set purpose, plan, model or photography. I let things happen. But I do have a starting-point, which has come from my realization that the only true reality are my feelings, played out within the confines of my body. They are physiological sensations: a feeling of pressure when I sit or lie down, feelings of tension and senses of spatial extent. These things are quite hard to depict.’ Her famed portraits and self-portraits are often treated with a playful irony, even in her depictions of the aging body and psychological turmoil.

In 1980, Lassnig was awarded a professorship—with a focus on painting and animation film—at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As a result, her self-portraits repeatedly explored issues of overload and enforced estrangement. She then began dealing more extensively with mythological contents, with nature and ‘rural life,’ and continued her exploration of figure-ground tensions. From the late 1990s, Lassnig turned to the great existential themes with her so-called Drastic Pictures, such as the relationship between the sexes and generations, unchosen lifestyles, as well as oppression, destruction, impermanence, and death.

Portrait: Maria Lassnig in her studio, Vienna, 2007 © Monopol/Elfie Semotan 2007