“A work that struck me particularly recently is You or Me by Maria Lassnig (1919–2014), painted in 2005. It is a rather unsettling oil painting, as are most of the works by this Austrian artist, born in Carinthia, in which a naked, somewhat deformed woman points a gun at the viewer while simultaneously pointing another at her own temple. The painting is certainly not pleasant, neither in subject nor in the message it conveys; however, it contains an incredible, almost brutal strength, a depiction of how, at times, one is forced to survive in order not to die.”
Maria Lassnig is considered one of the most significant and introspective European painters, best known for her Körpergefühl (“body awareness”) paintings, through which she explored bodily self-perception.
Although she showed a particular talent for drawing from an early age, it was thanks to a childhood friend’s suggestion that she decided to pursue a career in the arts. In 1947, in the midst of World War II, she opened a studio in Klagenfurt, which became a meeting place for painters and poets. There, she met artist Arnulf Rainer (1929), who later became her lover and introduced her to Art Informel.
From Klagenfurt, Lassnig moved first to Vienna, then Paris, and eventually New York. These journeys exposed her to Cubist and Informalist influences and led her to begin, as early as 1949, introspective studies of her own body.
A recurring theme in many of her works is the body, depicted in both human and animal form, reflecting social discomfort caused by urban alienation and materialism. Many of her self-portraits feature bodies with missing parts or fused with everyday objects. Through these often deliberately unsettling bodily distortions, Lassnig draws attention to her identity as a woman often portrayed in eerie, robotic forms.
In her paintings, the anthropomorphic world merges with the zoomorphic one, forming a symbiosis between human and nature that is both dramatic and captivating. Lassnig’s artistic exploration is a kind of self-analysis, to which she subjected herself with deep emotional sensitivity.
In addition to the bodily element, firearms frequently appear in her works, such as in Du oder ich (You or Me), one of her most well-known paintings. Their inclusion is not a symbol of outward violence or threat but rather a symptom of the artist’s internal pain. Despite the apparent menace toward the viewer, the subject seeks to be heard and saved from a state of distress.
Even though her palette often consists of soft and luminous colors, a pervasive sense of death lingers in her work. Her paintings embody a latent tension between opposing forces; they both attract and repel the viewer, echoing her inner turmoil while also expressing the collective struggles of entire generations.
Zagarese continues: “Art is a means of communication that should not only express aesthetic beauty but also represent the harsh realities that people would rather not see—but that nonetheless exist. The theme of survival is incredibly relevant today, and none of us would have ever imagined living through a pandemic in a world that talks only about progress and increasing well-being. And yet, this is the reality we are all experiencing in a very dramatic way these days!”
An artistic career recognized also on a social level, Maria Lassnig played a pioneering role in the feminist movement within the visual arts, a milestone that was officially acknowledged near the end of her life, in 2013, when she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Biennale.
In 2014, the year of her death, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York dedicated a major retrospective to her work, granting her universal artistic recognition; in 2016, it was Tate Modern in London’s turn to celebrate the artist with an exhibition.
Biography
UMBERTO ZAGARESE | Accountant and art collector. The son of collectors, he is actively involved in bringing together and coordinating collectors from the Veneto region.