Maria Lassnig (1919–2014)

To mark the exhibition Maria Lassnig. The Location of Pictures which took place in the Neue Galerie Graz in 2012/13, and was taken over by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the artist gifted to the Universalmuseum Joanneum five central paintings from various phases of her work. Together with works already in the collection of the Neue Galerie, they form an impressive cross-section of her work. Completing the collection’s permanent exhibition the gifted paintings are on show from 28.04.2015.
 
From the outset, life took on firm form for Maria Lassnig in the picture – painting, drawing and film.

Surrealism and Art Informel were quickly conquered. Her own body increasingly became the central event, the medium generating pictures. Yet in no sense is there an established procedure for rendering the Self visible, no reliable means to achieve it. The analysis and depiction of one’s own sensations is also unattainable for established science. All the more powerful then is Maria Lassnig’s undertaking to define a code of representation through her art, which makes visible to the outside world the ephemeral goings-on of the inner pictorial world. On the one hand, this is the expression of that which is felt, manifesting itself in the manner of the interaction with the material; on the other hand, it is a situation of observing that records itself. Consistently, pictures become in this way as it were components of their own corporeality.
The ‘body awareness’ of the artist is thus enhanced and understood as an analytical process.

In her art she united experiences from performative body art just as she did aspects of media art. Her influence on the following generations is correspondingly important.