Early Life and Education Maria Lassnig, born September 8, 1919, in Kappel am Kraffeld, Austria, experienced a formative childhood shaped by her mother’s tumultuous relationship with an older man—a dynamic that instilled in Lassnig a profound understanding of familial complexity. Raised primarily by her grandmother, this early upbringing would become a recurring motif throughout her artistic oeuvre, reflecting themes of vulnerability a…