MARIA LASSNIG* (Kappel am Krappfeld 1919 - 2014... Lot n° 564

MARIA LASSNIG* (Kappel am Krappfeld 1919 - 2014 Vienna) Self-portrait color offset print/paper, 40 x 27,5 cm signed in pencil M Lassnig after an original work by the artist "Selfportrait as a native american girl", 1973, oil/canvas, 182,6 x 127 cm ESTIMATE °€ 400 - 800 STARTING PRICE °€ 400 Maria Lassnig was an Austrian artist. After her Matura, she trained as a primary school teacher; From 1940 to 1941 she taught in Metnitztal. In the winter semester of 1940/1941 she began studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Wilhelm Dachauer. As Lassnig painted more colorfully and expressively, differences arose with Dachauer. She then continued her studies in Ferdinand Andri's class, which she completed with a diploma in 1945. In 1943 and 1944 she received the Carinthia Gau scholarship and in February 1945 a state travel scholarship, which was paid out due to a lack of travel opportunities. After graduating, she returned to Klagenfurt and moved into a studio where she received Klagenfurt's artistic avant-garde: Arnold Clementschitsch, Michael Guttenbrunner, Max Hölzer and Arnold Wande. In 1949 she had her first solo exhibition in Klagenfurt in Edith Kleinmayr's gallery on Alter Platz, where she showed expressionist paintings in the style of “Carinthian colorism”. Around 1948 she met Arnulf Rainer and the two became a couple. Lassnig described surrealism as “liberation from the objective and the intended”. In 1951 Lassnig moved back to Vienna. In Vienna, Lassnig was active in the artist association “Art Club” and in the “Hundsgruppe”. In 1951, Lassnig received a scholarship from the French Cultural Institute that enabled her to travel to Paris three times. In Paris, Lassnig and Rainer contacted Paul Celan, who arranged a meeting with André Breton, where they also met Benjamin Péret and Toyen. In Paris they saw pictures by Jackson Pollock and Georges Mathieu for the first time and met Jean-Paul Riopelle, who liked the two's portfolios. Riopelle introduced her to Karel Appel, Hans Hartung and Wols. Lassnig learned drypoint etching from Paul Celan's wife Gisèle Lestrange, and she also visited Camille Bryen. Back in Austria, Lassnig and Rainer organized the controversial exhibition “Young Unfigurative Painting” at the Künstlerhaus Klagenfurt; Lassnig formulated the “No Defense” manifesto. In 1954 she returned to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna to study in the class of Albert Paris Gütersloh. Together with Oswald Oberhuber, Wolfgang Hollegha, Josef Mikl, Markus Prachensky and Arnulf Rainer, she belonged to the circle around Monsignor Otto Mauer, the art-loving patron and founder of the Galerie nächst St. Stephan. Another important contact was the writers of the “Vienna Group” Friedrich Achleitner, H. C. Artmann, Gerhard Rühm and Oswald Wiener. Together with Arnulf Rainer, Lassnig is considered the founder of informal painting in Austria. From 1961 to 1968, Lassnig lived in Paris and painted her first body awareness watercolours as well as body image figurations two metres tall that were never exhibited. In 1968, Lassnig moved into a studio in the East Village, New York. Large-format silk screen prints were created. In 1970 she took an animation course at the School of Visual Arts; she experiments with a 16mm film camera. In 1974 she founded the feminist association “Women/Artists/Filmmakers” with Carolee Schneemann. In 1977, Lassnig's work was shown for the first time in a retrospective at the Albertina in Vienna and at the Kunstverein Kärnten. A DAAD scholarship took her to Berlin in 1978. In 1980 she finally returned to Vienna and took over the management of the master class for “design theory – experimental design” at the University of Applied Arts. She made the collaboration of the art theorist Heimo Kuchling and the same fee as Joseph Beuys a condition. In Vienna her students included Guido Hoffmann, Mara Mattuschka, Bady Minck and Sabine Groschup. Together with Valie Export she represented Austria at the Venice Biennale. In 1982 she founded Austria's only teaching studio for animation in her master class. Lassnig's works were exhibited at documenta 7 in 1982 and at documenta X in Kassel in 1997. Lassnig had solo exhibitions in the Museum of the 20th Century in Vienna, in the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, in the Kunsthalle Nürnberg, the Kärntner Landesgalerie, the Galerie Hundertmark in Cologne, the Galerie Onnasch in Berlin, in the Kunstmuseum Lucerne; from the 1990s also in Paris, New York, The Hague, Frankfurt am Main, Zurich, Munich and Rome. In 2001 she received the Rubens Prize from the city of Siegen and in 2004 the Max Beckmann Prize from the city of Frankfurt/Main. On the occasion of her 90th birthday, an extensive solo exhibition by the artist was on display in Munich in 2010. For the 2005/2006 season she designed the Iron Curtain of the Vienna State Opera with the picture “Breakfast with an Ear”. Characteristic of Lassnig's work is, among other things: a novel representation of physicality that she developed from the 1940s onwards. In the 1970s, she coined the term “body awareness” for her approach in order to set herself apart from the “emotional” term “body feeling”. With “Body Awareness,” Lassnig is considered a forerunner of feminist body art and Viennese actionism. PLEASE NOTE: The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked °), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax of 13%, for photographs 20%, is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium. The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.