Lot 16 D

The overwhelming majority of Maria Lassnig's works are self-portraits. She chooses the investigation of her own body and its constantly changing sensibilities as the decisive artistic theme, as it is literally the closest thing to her - more than any other subject of the outside could ever be. She is not motivated by narcissism, but quite the opposite, by merciless self-exploration. Without shyness of intimate exposure and without consideration of aesthetics, she dedicates herself to an intense internalisation in order to present an unfiltered depiction of body consciousness, something which is particularly present to a person of extraordinary sensitivity. Realism and abstraction merge seamlessly, her body is shortened, distorted, fragmented, or merged with other people, animals or objects.
The visualisation is not created intentionally, but rather as an expression of her current feeling. “I step, so to speak, naked in front of the canvas, without intention, without planning, without model, without photography, and allow it to emerge. However, I have a starting point which arose from the realisation that the only thing that is really real for me are my feelings that take place inside the body's shell: physiological nature, the pressure felt when sitting or lying down, feelings of tension and spatial expansion - rather difficult things to depict”, so the artist describes her own creative process (Maria Lassnig, quoted from: exhib. cat. Maria Lassnig, Museum moderner Kunst/Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts Wien, et al., Vienna 1985, p.79). The resulting motif can therefore never be completely deciphered by the viewer, as only the artist herself knows the personal circumstances which produced it.
“Death is a sphinx” shows Lassnig as a hybrid between human and animal in the classical reclining posture of a sphinx, the head reduced to a skull, with a torch between the lion paws symbolising life and death.