In 1951, Lassnig traveled to Paris with the artist Arnulf Rainer and, despite their draconian poverty, was soon immersed in the city’s rich artistic milieu. After leaving surrealism and cubism behind, and inspired by seeing de Koonings and Pollocks, she became entranced with the gestural freedom of abstraction. Returning to Vienna, Lassnig brought a new minimalism to her “body sensations.” She bitterly resented the lopsided attention given to Rainer and the other male artists whose innovations were no more original than her own.

Wresting herself from the exigencies of gender and heart, Lassnig moved to Paris in 1961. Her studio permitted the creation of larger works that seesawed between abstraction and realism. Thick lines of acid green, reds, and yellows mapped a new kind of body awareness. In 1964, the death of her mother—her fiercest ally—plunged her into depression. She began painting monsters and severed body parts. The critic Robert Storr would write, “One can’t really imagine waking up in bed with one of her double-jointed contraptions.”

In 1968, Lassnig decamped to New York, relieved to encounter a flourishing women’s movement. After a short course in animation, she began work with bare-bones equipment on a series of 10 hand-drawn films based on body awareness. On view at the Des Moines Art Center, these films are lively, ironic, and, like her paintings, keenly autobiographical.

In turn, Lassnig’s paintings became animated by technology and mutations. A face sprouted a camera or a muzzle, or fell into fragments on a table. A body multiplied or was pierced. Few understood what she was after, and the disaffection of press and friends unmoored her. Hence, in 1980, Lassnig accepted the first female professorship offered by the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Students clamored to get into her classes but nevertheless feared the “she-wolf.”

Lassnig finally had money and job security, and was receiving numerous awards and solo exhibitions. But she never overcame her discomfort and mistrust. “I have no skin,” she said. “All my nerves are exposed.” Paintings of cellophane-wrapped bodies were testament to feelings of isolation and vulnerability. Lending her paintings for exhibitions struck terror: They were the children, the husband, she didn’t have. This later work is in the show at Petzel.

The exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle pairs Lassnig with Edvard Munch, one of her heroes. Their affinities are plain. Both used painting as a form of self-examination: Color, brushwork, and composition all served to relay physical phenomena. Munch was more emotional; Lassnig more analytical. Yet they both relied on images of nature, the bond with animals, and, notably, a scream, as mediums for pain and transformation. And, like Munch, Lassnig often felt misunderstood.

Her last film, Kantate (1992), is a witty, sung autobiography—and it’s available on YouTube. Why not let Maria explain herself to you?

It’s a short one tonight since I’m traveling. But I’ve got a lot more coming up this week.

More soon,
M