"To translate a bodily feeling into plastic or graphic language is not easy, to want to limit its spread to certain boundaries and forms is an arbitrary act that has its justification only in its respective intensity, originality and selection." (Maria Lassnig)
On the occasion of her 100th birthday, we dedicated an exhibition in our graphic cabinet to the Austrian artist Maria Lassnig, who died in 2014, highlighting almost all of her creative years. At the center of her relentlessly candid body-consciousness paintings are her own physical sensations. With what she herself called her "body awareness paintings" she has found an independent path between figuration and abstraction.
All the paintings, drawings, watercolors and prints exhibited in our presentation come from the Klewan Collection. In 1981, the art collector showed the first Lassnig exhibition in his then Munich gallery. Many other solo presentations followed, which contributed to Maria Lassnig finally receiving the recognition she deserved in the second half of her life, also abroad. Today she is considered the most important Austrian painter of the post-war period.
"Thirty years of friendship with Maria Lassnig were like a battle. You had to talk her out of every painting. She preferred to give me oil paintings on commission rather than sell them. The awareness of not getting a painting back was unbearable for her. Fortunately, she almost turned 95 and lived to see her world fame." (Helmut Klewan)