Violette Form (Purple Form), 1951
Oil on canvas
Flächenteilung Schwarz-Grau 9 (Field-division black-grey 8), 1953
Oil on cardboard
Flächenteilung Schwarz-Weiss-Grau 2 (Field-division black-white-grey 2), 1953
Oil on cardboard
Flächenteilung Schwarz-Weiss-Grau 1 (Field-division black-white-grey 1), 1953
Oil on cardboard
detail from Dornenreif/Frau im Dornenreifen, 1963/1964
Oil on canvas
detail from Der Indianer in Berlin (The Native American in Berlin), 1979
Oil on canvas
Unterbrechung (Interruption), 1989
Oil on canvas
Selbstporträt mit Sprechblase (Self-portrait with speech bubble), 2006
Oil on canvas
Having come to know Lassnig's work a bit within the past ten years or so, it was a nice surprise to see these earlier works, the ones from the 50's where her investigation of pictorial space seemed to precede the likes of Ellsworth Kelly, for example. Kelly's negotiation of organic and geometric space came to mind instantly with Purple Form. So, Lassnig, too, was preoccupied with how color occupies space and what contains it. That said, I believe it is the psychology of her figurative work that brought her attention, and so, again, it was interesting to make this connection between earlier structurally-based works, let's call them, and later works that fuse the body to such concerns. The space a body occupies continues to be amorphous in Lassnig's paintings. In fact, the space a body IS also seems slightly ambiguous, amoebic, a fluid, a spill barely contained, and somehow the color juxtapositions hold things place.
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