Maria Lassnig, Selbstporträt mit Ordenskette, 1963, Oil on canvas. The Klewan Collection. © Maria Lassnig Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024.
The Klewan Collection
Maria Lassnig (1919–2014) is one of the most important contemporary artists. Her main subjects are self-portraits, which also depict her appearance, but the artistic focus is on translating her physical sensations into images. She describes the process of creating her “body feeling pictures” as a fight against the mirror or “memory image” that needs to be “extinguished” in favor of the perception of pure body feeling.
Maria Lassnig, Traum, 1964, Oil on canvas. The Klewan Collection. © Maria Lassnig Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024.
Lassnig also assigns the colors according to her feelings: “The forehead is given a color of thought, the nose is given an olfactory color, the arms and legs are given the color of the flesh; there are pain colors and torment colors, printing and solid colors, stretching and pressed colors, [...] – these are all colors of reality.”
Maria Lassnig, Brettl vorm Kopf, 1967, Oil on canvas. The Klewan Collection. © Maria Lassnig Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024.
Works on display are some of Lassnigs famous oil paintings “armchair self-portraits” and “monster pictures” from the 1960s, and nearly 80 works on paper from the 1970s to 1990s. They’re largely self-portraits, accompanied by some impressions from the New York period (1968–1979), travel experiences, etc.
Maria Lassnig, Sesselselbstporträt, 1968, Oil on canvas. The Klewan Collection. © Maria Lassnig Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024.
From the 1980s onwards, Maria Lassnig became internationally recognized in the context of the new interest in figurative painting. In 1980 she exhibited together with Valie Export at the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, in 1982 she took part in documenta 7, and in 2013 she was awarded the Golden Lion for her life’s work at the Venice Biennale.
Maria Lassnig, Herzselbstporträt im grünen Zimmer, 1968, Oil on canvas. The Klewan Collection. © Maria Lassnig Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024.
All works are on loan from the art collector and former gallery owner Helmut Klewan, who showed Maria Lassnig's work in his Munich gallery since 1981. He remembers Lassnig as follows: “You had to talk her into every picture. She gave me oil paintings on commission rather than selling them. The awareness of not being able to get a picture back was unbearable for her. Luckily, she was almost 95 and lived to see her world fame.”
