Immortal Maria Lassnig

I have never forgotten the shock that the vision of Maria Lassnig's large paintings at MumoK, the MUseum MODErner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, produced for me in February 2009, in Vienna. The Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, basically. I expected it all the less since I had initially been invited to a press trip whose theme was focused on “Vienna above and below”, namely that we experienced on the one hand the St. Valentine's Day at Schönbrunn Palace, with waltz, long dress and carriage rides to enjoy the traditional early morning soup, and on the other hand a "trendy" night in the city's underground places, such as a nightclub installed in a metro station. Except that between the two nights, we had a day, and the hours of sleep are rarely integrated into the press trip programs. To my great joy, a stroll through the museum district, a veritable treasure trove of works of art, was planned that day, with a visit to the famous Belvedere, where I notably enjoyed the real Kiss by Gustav Klimt, but also the most beautiful collection of works of art by Egon Schiele, as well as numerous paintings by Oskar Kokoschka and Richard Gerstl, among others... just before arriving at the museum of modern art, the MumoK.

These bodies exposed in all the force of their nudity, of their old age, these characters as vulnerable as they are courageous, this painting charged with so much violence despite its seemingly harmless colors... what an encounter! At the time, I had never heard of Maria Lassnig. And I couldn't believe it. How could I have until then missed this Austrian painter, born September 8, 1919 in Kappel am Krappfeld and died May 6, 2014 in Vienna, so well known for her conflicting self-portraits? It was fifteen years ago. I was probably still young. And then, you can never know everything, can you? We can only discover and learn every day. And marvel at it. Which I continue to do with delight. If I talk to you about Maria Lassnig today, it is because Anne Bertrand, critic and art historian, devotes the section “The key work” to her in the June issue of the contemporary art magazine Artpress . By concluding as follows: “This woman/artist will not die. » Which I can confirm to you.

Interested in "body awareness", Maria Lassnig paints by describing characters from the inside, using distorted or exaggerated elements to represent their internal feelings and sensations. “Feeling,” people said to themselves, “is sensitivity, or: feeling is something feminine. Only today, they are starting to think that it is a sensation, and that a sensation is not just feminine,” the artist confided during an interview in 1995. “It There are not only big feelings, there are also small ones, and it is in them that I am interested… not in consciousness, but in what we feel; I draw a sensation, and when I analyze the thing, it seems to me that an image is in me before I even draw it. I develop a form that corresponds to it, that in one way or another comes close to it, but in fact it is almost impossible: the image disappears from second to second. »

Thus, and as Anne Bertrand reminds us in Artpress, “Maria Lassnig has notably produced a number of self-portraits over the decades, appearing in turn very recognizable or quite differently, depending on the sensations experienced (…) The painted self-portrait is frontal, raw. He takes up the direct nudity of Valie Export, in her performance Genitalpanik (1969); and also the liberating Shots (1961-63) of Niki de Saint-Phalle, appropriating the long-masculine gesture of the hunter or killer (…) His commitment as an artist, energetic, provocative, goes hand in hand with a keen sense of self-deprecation. What other painter, man or woman, will have exposed themselves in this way? Who else will have inflicted these distortions, caricatures, exaggerations on herself rather than on others (with what elegance)? »

Born to a single mother who was a teacher, Lassnig was primarily raised by her grandmother. She will only meet her father once she is an adult. Before studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under the Nazi yoke, then moving to Paris where she met members of the avant-garde and became familiar with abstract expressionism, she taught first, she also worked as a teacher after her baccalaureate. Initially working in abstraction, Lassnig ended up turning to figuration, a style that she would use for the rest of her life. She moved to New York in the late 1960s, where she practiced animation, co-founded the Women Artists Filmmakers Inc. association and painted Woman Power in 1979. Art historian, journalist and feminist activist Elisabeth Lebovici also recalls on his blog in 2014 that Maria Lassnig “is considered to have been the one who allowed the opening (…) of painting to the feminist discourses of the 1970s”.

She returned to Austria in 1980 to take up the position of professor of painting at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, becoming the first woman from a German-speaking country to reach this position, and setting the condition of having the same salary as German artist Joseph Beuys. She was even president of the school until 1997. However, after a 50-year career, it was only as she approached sixty that Lassnig began to benefit from international attention. And therefore to interest collectors. His work was then exhibited all over the world, and his works of art for sale began to panic the art market. She was one of the artists to represent Austria at the Venice Biennale in 1980 and her work was the subject of retrospectives at the Center Pompidou Paris in 1995, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne in 2009 and the MoMA P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center in Queens in 2014. She is represented by art galleries Hauser & With and Friedrich Petzel Gallery. She died at the age of 94 in Vienna in 2014, a year after having obtained, like Marisa Merz, a Golden Lion for her entire career at the Venice Biennale.

Article written by Valibri in Roulotte

Drawing :

Maria Lassnig, Self-portrait with a stick, 1971

Oil and charcoal on canvas • 193 x 129 cm • Archive of the Maria Lassnig Foundation • © Wikimedia Commons