Curated by Peter Eleey
Austrian-born Maria Lassnig traveled from Paris to New York in 1968, in midcareer, to leave behind not only the continent of Europe but also its fundamental misunderstanding of her “body-consciousness paintings” as a form of expressionism. Embraced today for her defiant attitude, Lassnig garnered a Golden Lion at last year’s Venice Biennale for a lifetime of work that cuts to the bone. Assembling some fifty paintings from private and public collections as well as from the artist’s studio—together with a selection of her watercolors and rarely screened experimental animations—Eleey focuses on the groundbreaking self-portraits Lassnig has been making for over seven decades, which translate interiority and corporeal experience into radical, vulnerable, and sometimes sarcastic pictures. Organized in collaboration with the Neue Galerie Graz, Austria.
Translated from German by Alexander Scrimgeour.
