SwissArtGallery · Documented identity

Maria Lassnig

Documented citizenships : Austria

The Austrian artist Maria Lassnig makes the body and its inner sensations a central subject of her painting; much of her work takes the form of self-portraits. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, she graduated in 1945. She lived in New York from 1968 to 1978. In 1980, she took up a post as a professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and represented Austria at the Venice Biennale; two years later, she founded a teaching studio for experimental animation film.

In her paintings, realism and abstraction intermingle: the body may be foreshortened, distorted or fragmented, and merge with other people, animals or objects. Lassnig describes a practice without prior intention or planning, in which the image takes shape in the course of working; according to the notice, the personal circumstances that gave rise to a motif are known only to the artist. Der Tod ist eine Sphinx, painted in oil on canvas in 1985, measures 100 × 115 cm. The work depicts a hybrid figure, between human and animal, in the pose of a sphinx; its head is reduced to a skull, and a torch appears between its lion’s paws.

Der Tod ist eine Sphinx is listed in the catalogue for the exhibition Mit dem Kopf durch die Wand, presented in Lucerne in 1989, and then in Graz and at the Wiener Secession. The recorded exhibitions devoted to Maria Lassnig also include those at the Musée des beaux-arts de Nantes in 1999, the Serpentine Gallery in 2008, mumok in Vienna in 2009 and MoMA PS1 in 2014.

This profile brings together identity references for Maria Lassnig and paintings, drawings and works on paper documented in auction catalogues.

Documented auction references

24auction references

3auction houses

5documented results with prices

Lempertz · Koller · Germann

References include catalogue entries and available results; they do not all represent completed sales. Attributed works and special lots are excluded from the priced results.

Works recorded at auction

Photograph : Lempertz · Enlarge image ↗

Lempertz · Lot 16

Death Is a Sphinx

Oil on canvas

Original catalogue wording

Der Tod ist eine Sphinx
Öl auf Leinwand

Auction date : 2020-06-18

Published result : 275000 EUR

Including buyer’s premium

Estimate : 180000

Maria Lassnig

Documented auction references

Works recorded at auction

Death Is a Sphinx

Mutter u. Kind

Oben u. Unten

Untitled

Grossmutter und Grossvater als Embrio

Sciencefiction Nasenansauge. 1993.

Schneemann auf der Tourrach, 1983

Zweigeteiltes Ich, 1958

Désespoir et brume, 1997

Rosenmontag Schwefelbad Heviz, 1992

Ohne Titel (Aktstudie), 1956

Meine Höhenschichtenlinien, 1990

Unerbittliche Resistenz, 1986

Gesichtsnerven, 1990

Bettwürmer, 1986

Der Mensch ist ein Orakel, 1990

Wörter-unterseetaucherin, 1990

Nervenlinien, 1983

Hundegebell im Garten, 1983

Sehnsucht in Pitten, 1986

Stoffwechsel, Selbstreparatur, Replication = Lebewesen, 1989

Der Liebe unterworfen, 1990

Frivolikus, 1990

Stammbaum der Familie Fly von Beutelstroke, 1979

Sources and references

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