Publisher: Zhejiang Photographic Press

Publication Date: 2024

Binding: Paperback, 225 pages

Language: Chinese and English

ISBN: 9787551449045

From September 2, 2023 to January 7, 2024, UCCA presents “Maria Lassnig: Happy Martian.” The exhibition marks the first significant presentation of the work of Austrian painter Maria Lassnig (1919-2014) in China. Internationally regarded as one of the leading artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, 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. The exhibition features 36 paintings drawn from all periods of Lassnig’s practice along with a selection of important drawings, ranging from her early involvement with graphic abstraction to her “realist” paintings of the 1970s and her innovative late self-portraits.

The bilingual catalogue Maria Lassnig: Happy Martian marks the artist’s first publication in China. Comprehensive documentation of the UCCA exhibition accompanies essays by exhibition curators Peter Eleey (UCCA Curator-at-Large) and Antonia Hoerschelmann (Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, the ALBERTINA Museum), art historian Michio Hayashi, and art critic Fiona He, exploring various facets of the Beijing show and Lassnig’s more than seven-decade-long practice. Supported by the Maria Lassnig Foundation, the catalogue is designed by Lynn Lai and published by Zhejiang Photographic Press.