Guided Tour: Maria Lassnig – The Pencil is the Best Instrument for Thinking

Maria Lassnig. The Body without Organs Maria Lassnig (1919-2014) is a cardinal artist in her sharp questioning of contemporary art as it faced a crisis of the theme, the object and the subject. Across seven decades, through the practice of drawing and painting, her oeuvre ransomed the perceptions of the body by researching the possibilities of surveying and expressing sensations, which in themselves signal mental and emotional states, tensions in interpersonal relationships (particularly gender relationships) and the imperceptible conflicts of psychophysiology. Relentlessly, Maria Lassnig gaged the movement between the infra-reality of feeling and its visual translation, developing a research methodology and specific formal strategies for the intensive use of line and colour. In drawing and painting (as well as in sculpture, writing and animated film), Maria Lassnig left the raw imprint of an oeuvre that was markedly personal, eminently feminist, sexual and political, and remains fresh today.