The artist Maria Lassnig and the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist had an amicable exchange lasting twenty years, where they discussed art, literature and their exhibition and book projects together. Published for the first time here, handwritten letters from Maria Lassnig provide an insight into her reflections on art and her existence as an artist, into their heights, depths and intricacies. Maria Lassnig allowed her addressee not only to partake in her thoughts on painting or polemics on photography, but also in her everyday life between the urban art world and her remote studio in the countryside.
Contributor: Kirsten Breitenfellner
Publisher: Walther Koenig, 2020
Language: English and German
Softcover: 296 pages
Dimensions: 8 x 10.75 inches
ISBN: 9783960988175
About the artist
Maria Lassnig was born in 1919 in Carinthia, Austria and passed away in 2014 in Vienna. Underappreciated for most of her life, Lassnig is now rightfully recognized as one of the most important Post-War painters.
From a young age, Lassnig began to explore the human figure through drawing. She studied painting at the Vienna Fine Arts Academy but found the art scene at that time to be too limiting. She moved to Paris in 1960 and then to New York in 1968, continually exploring how to represent the body as it feels to inhabit rather than how it appears from the outside – a concept which Lassnig named Körperbewusstseinsmalerei (“body awareness painting”). On returning to her native Austria in 1980, she became the country’s first female professor of painting. She also taught animation during her time at the Vienna University of Applied Arts.
Her life’s work won her many accolades including the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1988 and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2013 at the 55th Venice Biennale. She has been the subject of one person exhibitions at the Albertina Museum, Vienna; Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Kunsthaus Zurich; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Serpentine Gallery, London; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; and Vienna Secession among others. Lassnig represented Austria in the 1980 Venice Biennale alongside Valie Export, and she participated in Documenta in Kassel, Germany in 1982 and 1997.
