Maria Lassnig retrospective at Kunstmuseum Basel showcases key works

In an exhibition titled Dialogues, the Kunstmuseum Basel presents around ninety drawings and watercolors by the Austrian artist Maria Lassnig, who died four years ago. The retrospective showcases key works as well as sheets that have never been on public display. Deeply felt emotions are at the core of the art of Maria Lassnig (1919–2014). Works she labeled “body awareness” art seek to render physical sensations and trace the nuances of her perception of her own body. Humorous and serious, driven by profound yearnings and relentlessly rigorous, the artist captured her sense of—mental, physical—self on paper, transmuting not what she saw but how she felt her own existence into images. Even as she honed her introspective attention to her body, Lassnig remained in constant touch with the outside world. Her portraits grow out of a searching study of reality, though her sensitive observations of animals a