A 90-year-old finally goes solo

A historic thaw is going on in the icy world of modern art. Scores of artists who were banished by dictatorial modernists to the margins on account of their out-of-date style and traditional subject matter are now are being given solo shows in today’s avaricious, anything-goes art world.

Among them are a handful of underrated female artists such as the Austrian Expressionist Maria Lassnig, now given her first one-woman exhibition in Britain. Lassnig, remarkably still painting with enviable energy in her nineties, works in an athletic and lurid style that lies somewhere between Oskar Kokoschka and Philip Guston. Her subject matter is traditional — portraits, self-portraits and full-length figures — and a decade ago no curator in this country would have given her the time of day.

Nowadays we are less interested in which style an artist paints than in what they paint. Lassnig’s material is absorbing — a unique feminine take on Expressionism, as intimate as it is intense. In one striking self-portrait she pictures herself naked, a pile of impulsive acid yellow, orange and turquoise brushstrokes. She is staring out at the viewer, holding a gun in each hand, one pointed at her head, the other out at us. Hmm — interesting internal life, right?

Lassnig’s gaze is unsentimental when directed at herself and tender when directed at others. The Serpentine’s large central space is full of pictures of half-dressed young lovers gently canoodling. There are also a series of charming animated films, mostly executed in the 1970s, about relationships and the female body.

However, although her bright loose brushwork carries a passion and precision that few can equal, this late body of work is neither innovative nor transgressive enough to earn Lassnig a place in the premier league of Bacon and Baselitz as an artist of the disintegrating body.

Until 8 June. Information: 020 7402 6075, www.serpentinegallery.org

Maria Lassnig
Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens, W2 3XA