It is profound sensation that lies at the centre of Maria Lassnig’s (1919–2014) work. Making bodily emotions visible and tracing body awareness are at the heart of her “body-awareness” pieces. With humour and gravity, longing and ruthlessness, the Austrian artist fixed her sense of self on paper. Not what she saw, but how she felt herself, became the image. Alongside her introspective body awareness Lassnig remained anchored in the outer world. Her portraits are based on thorough study of reality. Yet her sensitive observations of animals and people go far beyond mere representation of the visible and capture the essence of each character and the singular in the other. This dialogue between inner and outer, between emotional worlds and realities, Lassnig developed with particular clarity on paper. Drawing becomes an intimate medium and a field for experimentation with spontaneously placed lines and areas of colour. It opens new perspectives and explores new themes. Despite the intimacy of the drawn, the artist tended to create works on paper in monumental, painting-like compositions. Long since, the idea of the sketch or first draft was exploded in Lassnig’s work and transformed into an autonomous artistic statement on paper. Her painting, too, visibly continues the intensity of the drawing, the energy of the single line and the radiance of the watercolours. Maria Lassnig is counted among the most important artists of the twentieth century, with Louise Bourgeois, Joan Mitchell and Agnes Martin. Early on she made her own body the focus of her art, long before body consciousness and the relation between men and women became central themes of the international avant-garde.
Source: Kunstmuseum Basel | MARIA LASSNIG - ZWIEGESPRÄCHE | 12.05.2018–26.08.2018 / CURATOR: DR. ANITA HALDEMANN
Article: Kompromisslose Körperkunst | Das Kunstmuseum Basel zeigt Maria Lassnigs mitunter verstörende Grafiken | Maria Becker | NZZ Samstag, 2. Juni 2018
Image: Maria Lassnig, ‘Kopf (Head)’ (film still), mid-1970s. Maria Lassnig Foundation
