Provocative Austrian feminist artist Valie Export dies at 85

Austrian avant-garde artist Valie Export, a leading figure in feminist performance art, has died in Vienna at 85. Known for her provocative works challenging gender norms, she helped reshape postwar European contemporary art.

Reuters

15 May 2026 at 06:48:47

FILE PHOTO: Austrian avant-garde artist Valie Export addresses the media prior the opening of her exhibition 'VALIE EXPORT Retrospective' at the Albertina museum in Vienna, Austria, June 22. 2023.

Leonhard Foeger/Reuters

Austrian artist Valie Export, whose pioneering work and performance art made her a leading light of the avant-garde feminist scene in postwar Europe, has died in Vienna at the age of 85, her foundation said on Thursday.

Born Waltraud Lehner in Linz in 1940, Export married young and had a daughter while still a teenager. The girl grew up in the family of the artist's sister after Export decided she was not, as she once described it, cut out to be a housewife.

Moving to Vienna, she adopted in the 1960s the pseudonym VALIE EXPORT, partly based on her own nickname as well as on the name of a brand of cigarettes. Her capitalisation of the name was itself an act of empowerment, her foundation said.

Export famously appeared partially nude in public spaces early in her career to challenge attitudes about the female body and women's place in society. Her provocative work would later explore conceptual art, video installations and cinema.

Among her best-known works were the performance art of "Tapp- und Tastkino" and "Aktionshose: Genitalpanik," and later experimental films such as "Unsichtbare Gegner" and "Syntagma."

-Reporting by Dave Graham in Zurich; Editing by Matthew Lewis/Reuters