VALIE EXPORT valuation

VALIE EXPORT (1940–2026) was born Waltraud Lehner in Linz and studied painting, drawing and design at the national school for the textile industry in Vienna. In 1967 she took the name VALIE EXPORT, set in capitals, borrowing the name of a cigarette brand, and in Vienna, alongside and against the Actionists, she made some of the most radical feminist art of the post-war period. In Tapp und Tastkino, Touch Cinema, of 1968, she walked the streets with a box strapped over her bare chest and invited passers-by to reach inside; Aktionshose: Genitalpanik, Action Pants: Genital Panic, followed in 1968 and 1969. She called her films, actions and installations expanded cinema, and co-founded the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative. In the Body Configurations, begun in 1972, she photographed her own body folded into the edges and corners of buildings and landscapes. Her feature film Invisible Adversaries followed in 1977. She represented Austria at the Venice Biennale in 1980, was in documenta 6 and 12, and taught for many years, from 1995 to 2005 as professor of multimedia and performance at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.

Photographs, including the Body Configurations and the images of her actions, make up much of her market, and the difference between vintage prints, later prints and editions is the main question, with the date of printing, the edition and her signature to be checked. Films and videos exist in editions with certificates. The VALIE EXPORT Center in Linz, founded in 2015 with her archive, and the VALIE EXPORT Foundation, set up in 2024, hold her records. Thaddaeus Ropac represents her estate.