
Maria Lassnig is internationally regarded as one of the leading artists of the twentieth century. Throughout a remarkable career that spanned more than 70 years, Lassnig regularly tried to paint the way her body felt, rather than how it looked. Though she lived most of her life in Austria, she spent significant periods abroad, including in Paris and New York. Featuring work from all creative periods of Lassnig’s career—including her early involvement with graphic abstraction, her “realist” paintings of the 1970s, and her innovative late self-portraits—the exhibition will notably offer a thematic approach to her groundbreaking and varied oeuvre. Curated by Peter Eleey, UCCA Curator-at-Large, and Antonia Hoerschelmann, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Albertina Museum, the exhibition will be the first significant presentation of Lassnig’s work in China, and is organized in cooperation with the Albertina Museum, Vienna and the Maria and is organized in cooperation with the Albertina Museum, Vienna and the Maria Lassnig Foundation.
A pioneer of post-war figurative painting, Maria Lassnig is best known for her raw, expressive self-portraits that capture what she termed ‘body awareness’, exploring the internal perception of physical and emotional states through art.



UCCA Center for Contemporary Art is China’s leading contemporary art institution. Committed to the belief that art can deepen lives and transcend boundaries, UCCA presents a wide range of exhibitions, public programs, and research initiatives to a public of more than one million visitors each year. UCCA Beijing sits at the heart of the 798 Art District, occupying 10,000 square meters of factory chambers built in 1957 and regenerated in 2019 by OMA. UCCA Dune, designed by Open Architecture, lies beneath the sand in the seaside enclave of Aranya in Beidaihe.

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