Maria Lassnig ─ Zwiegesprache / Dialogues: Retrospektive der Zeichnungen und Aquarelle / Retrospective of the Drawings and Watercolors

Three years after the death of one of the great contemporary artists of Austria, this publication pays homage to the drawings and watercolors of Maria Lassnig (1919–2014), who was known for her powerfully emotional paintings that emphasize the relationship between the physical body and the exterior world around it, be that nature or the urban landscape. This book honors Lassnig’s career, reproducing drawings and watercolors from throughout the decades, many of them never before seen. Though these works stand, impressively, on their own, a number of them can also be seen anticipating themes central to her paintings or offering autonomous variations on subjects taken up in the larger works.

Anita Haldemann is director of the copperplate engravings collection at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Antonia Hoerschelmann is a curator at the Albertina, a museum in Vienna, Austria, with a focus on old master prints and drawings and twentieth-century art.