Maria Lassnig
| Maria Lassnig | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
8 September 1919 Kappel am Krappfeld, Carinthia, Austria |
| Died | 6 May 2014 (aged 94) Vienna, Austria |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Known for | Painting |
| Awards | Grand Austrian State Prize (1988), Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award (2013) |
Maria Lassnig (8 September 1919 – 6 May 2014) was an Austrian artist known for her painted self-portraits and her theory of "body awareness". She was the first female artist to win the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1988 and was awarded the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 2005. Lassnig lived and taught in Vienna from 1980 until her death.
Maria Lassnig was born in Kappel am Krappfeld, Austria on 8 September 1919. 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. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna during World War II.
In the 1950s, Lassnig was part of the Hundsgruppe ("Dog Pack") group, which also included Arnulf Rainer, Ernst Fuchs, Anton Lehmden, Arik Brauer and Wolfgang Hollegha. The works of the group were influenced by abstract expressionism and action painting. In 1951 Lassnig traveled to Paris with Arnulf Rainer where they organized the exhibition Junge unifigurative Malerei at the Kärnten Art Association. In Paris she also met the surrealist artist André Breton and the poets Paul Celan and Benjamin Péret.
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 fleeing Vienna. In 1948 Lassnig coined the term "body consciousness" 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. By the 1960s Lassnig turned away from abstract painting altogether and began to focus more wholly on the human body and psyche. 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.
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