Maria Lassnig

Painter Maria Lassnig's striking self-portraits are some of the most respected of their kind. Her fascination with the human figure, in particular her own body, became a catalyst for the development of her distinctive style. In part inspired by the Surrealists, she described her practice as 'body awareness'; a commitment to portraying the physical and emotional experience of being. Using bold colours, overt gestures, and abstracted, at times grotesque, depictions of human bodies, Lassnig created intense artworks with compelling narrative suggestions. Over her long career her work explored a multitude of topics, but her forceful aesthetic and insistence on female individualism remained constant until the end.