[5][6] Her mother gave birth to her out of wedlock and later married a much older man, but their relationship was troubled and Lassnig was raised mostly by her grandmother.

[9] In the 1950s, Lassnig was part of the Hundsgruppe ("Dog Pack") group, which also included Arnulf Rainer, Ernst Fuchs, Anton Lehmden, Arik Brauer and Wolfgang Hollegha.

[11] In 1951 Lassnig traveled to Paris with Arnulf Rainer where they organized the exhibition Junge unifigurative Malerei at the Kärnten Art Association.

[12] In Paris she also met the surrealist artist André Breton and the poets Paul Celan and Benjamin Péret.

[16]  By the 1960s Lassnig turned away from abstract painting altogether and began to focus more wholly on the human body and psyche.

[14] Most of her work in the 1970s and 1980s paired her own image with objects, animals or other people, frequently with a blocked out or averted gaze, suggesting interiority.

[citation needed] She continued to paint, and in 2008 made her provocative self-portrait, You or Me, which exemplifies the often confrontational nature of her works.

[citation needed] For the 2005/2006 season at the Vienna State Opera she designed the large-scale (176 m²) Breakfast with Ear for the ongoing series "Safety curtain", conceived by museum in progress.

The exhibition was curated by Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist in association with Rebecca Morrill and featured thirty canvases and seven films.

Films’, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York NY, (2011), and The Location of Pictures, Universalmuseum Joanneum; Graz (2012).