Maria Lassnig – Difficult childhood, art studies in Vienna
Maria Lassnig was born on 8 September 1919 in Kappel am Krappfeld in Kärnten. At that time, her illegitimacy was considered a grave stigma – she initially grew up with her grandmother and received little attention. With her mother’s marriage to a master baker, Maria Lassnig found herself in an orderly household, attended a convent school, and on passing her school exams she trained as an elementary school teacher, although she only worked in this profession for one year. She had demonstrated a particular talent for drawing as a child which her mother recognised and encouraged. Her inclination towards art led Maria Lassnig in 1941 to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna where she initially studied under Wilhelm Dachauer. After falling out with Dachauer over differences of artistic opinion, however, she switched to the class of Ferdinand Andri. Although Dachauer accused her of degenerate art in front of an assembled student body, Maria Lassnig was considered a conformist during the Nazi dictatorship, with no political interest.
Pioneer of Informel painting in Austria
On completing her studies in 1945, Maria Lassnig opened her first studio in Klagenfurt where she held her first solo exhibition in Galerie Edith Kleinmayr in 1948. The title of this early show already heralded Lassnig’s central artistic interest: she presented small, surreal, figural compositions under the programmatic heading Körperbewusstseinszeichnungen (body awareness drawings). The translation of her own body awareness into an adequate pictorial language shaped Maria Lassnig’s work her entire life. With her partner, the painter Arnulf Rainer, ten years her junior, she undertook a trip to Paris in 1951 where she eventually met important French artist personalities such as Paul Celan, André Breton, Gisèle Lestrange and Benjamin Péret. Avant-gardism shaped Lassnig’s early work, and her trusted associates, in addition to Rainer, included the artists of the famous Galerie St. Stephan, such as Markus Prachensky, Josef Mikl, Oswald Oberhuber and Wolfgang Hollegha. Alongside Arnulf Rainer, Lassnig is classed as the initiator of Informel painting in Austria.
Experimental animation films and unusual self portraits
Maria Lassnig thematised the examination of her own body in numerous pictures she herself subsumed under the term body-awareness. The death of her mother in 1964 was a decisive event which shaped her art, and plagued by depression and a liver complaint, Lassnig emigrated to the USA. In New York, however, her works were seen as too morbid and met with rejection. Lassnig subsequently concentrated on the technique of silkscreen and turned towards animation films. At the beginning of the 1980s, she returned to her homeland of Austria where she founded a teaching studio for experimental animation film, which still exists today. She participated many times at documenta in Kassel, and co-represented Austria with Valie Export at the Venice Biennale. By the time she finally found international recognition for her art, Lassnig was already 61 years old. Numerous honours and retrospectives spanned the following three decades during which the artist never tired of rediscovering herself. In numerous self portraits, she staged herself in sometimes dramatic ways, as a dumpling, a robot, or frog queen.
Maria Lassnig died on 6 May 2014 in Vienna. She was given a grave of honour in the Vienna Central Cemetery.
Maria Lassnig - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
