Artistic realisation of the deeply felt is the central focus of Maria Lassnig’s oeuvre. Lassnig’s “body-awareness” works centre on rendering bodily sensations visible and retracing bodily perception. It was in a way that was at once humorous and serious, yearning and merciless that the artist put how she perceived and sensed her own self to paper. It was not what she saw with her eyes, but what she sensed via her body that she visualised.

Maria Lassnig stands alongside Louise Bourgeois, Joan Mitchell, and Agnes Martin as one of the most important women artists of the 20th century. It was early on that she made her own body the central focus of her art, long before body-consciousness, and the relations between women and men became central themes of the international avant-garde.

Three years after her death, the Albertina is honouring Maria Lassnig with a retrospective of her drawn work, bringing together around 80 of the artist’s most beautiful hand drawings. Works on paper that were entirely unknown up to now prove to be key, here: together with more familiar output, they shed new light on this Austrian artist’s concept of body-awareness and afford new insights into her diverse oeuvre.

An exhibition of the Albertina in cooperation with Kunstmuseum Basel.