Born in Kappel am Krappfeld, Austria

Maria Lassnig was born on September 8, 1919, in the small village of Kappel am Krappfeld in the Austrian region of Carinthia. She was born out of wedlock to Mathilde Lassnig, a circumstance that placed her in a socially precarious position in the conservative, rural Catholic society of interwar Austria.

Raised initially by her grandmother while her mother worked, Lassnig later described her childhood as marked by a sense of being an outsider, which she believed shaped her deeply introspective and self-focused artistic vision. Her mother eventually married a pharmacist, Jakob Lassnig, who adopted Maria and gave her his surname.

This modest, rural beginning stands in stark contrast to her eventual international recognition as one of the most important Austrian painters of the twentieth century. Her early sense of bodily awareness and isolation, she later said, became central to the development of her concept of "Körperbewusstseinsmalerei" (body-awareness painting), the singular artistic language for which she became world-renowned.

Her birth in a small Carinthian village, far from the art capitals of Europe, makes her subsequent rise to prominence at the Venice Biennale and major international museums all the more remarkable, and reflects the persistence and self-belief required of a woman artist forging an independent path in twentieth-century Austria.