Elvira Bach was born in 1951 in Neuenhain. She began her artistic training by studying glass-blowing at the Erwin-Stein-Schule (State Glass Vocational School) in Hadamar between 1967 and 1970, before training under Hann Trier at the Hochschule der Künste (Berlin University of the Arts) from 1972 to 1979.
During these formative years in the German capital, she mingled with the up-and-coming artists who, with her, would shape contemporary German art. Rainer Fetting and Helmut Middendorf, both contributors to the European Parliament Contemporary Art Collection, were among them.
Artistically, Bach’s work revolves around the desire to subvert established perceptions of femininity. She has undertaken this chiefly through nonconformist female depictions and self-portraits, which draw on different sources of inspiration: antiquity, archaic cultures and the likes of Frida Kahlo. Her oeuvre elevates and celebrates the Neue Frau by examining the past and challenging it through this universal imagery of the contemporary woman. Bach carries this redefinition of the female beyond the canvas, incarnating herself as a new model of woman artist. In 1982, for example, she was the first woman invited to exhibit at the documenta 7 in Kassel, at the age of 29. Her confidence in her work has allowed her to bypass the need to subscribe to contemporary trends and – amid conceptual, analytical and rational practices – she has stuck with the medium of painting, which she has explored in energetic, expressive and sensual ways.
The staples of her style are colour, dynamism and a selection of repeated motifs. Self-portraiture hold a central place in her art, the artist depicting herself with a flair for mise en scène. Accessories and lavish outfits are usually used to highlight her femininity, the thematic core of her body of work. From the 1980s onwards, the universalised female figure Bach extracts from her self-portraits has been associated with more explicitly erotic signifiers, such as the snake. This symbolic language went on to evolve with her experience and travels, such as her time in Senegal (1986-1992).
Bach currently lives and works in Berlin.
