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Silvia Bächli

Silvia Bächli is a Swiss visual artist, photographer, and educator, specializing primarily in painting and drawing.

Biography of Silvia Bächli

Silvia Bächli was born in 1956 in Baden, Switzerland. From 1976 to 1980, she studied at Schule für Gestaltung Basel and École Supérieure d'art visuel in Geneva. 

From 1992 to 2016, she was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe).

In 2009, Bächli's artwork was featured in the Swiss pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. The artist has received numerous awards and honors, including the Manor Cultural Prize in the Canton of Aargau in 1990, the Montres Breguet Prize for contemporary art in 1991, the Meret-Oppenheim Prize in 2003, and the drawing prize from the Daniel and Florence Guerlain Fondation d'Art Contemporain in 2007.

Her art has been exhibited at various venues worldwide, including Gallery Nicolas Krupp in Basel, Barbara Gross Galerie in Munich, Fondation Beyeler in Basel, i8 Gallery in Reykjavik, Galerie Vera Munro in Hamburg, Galerie Nelson-Freeman in Paris, Peter Freeman Inc. in New York, and many more.

Currently, Silvia Bächli lives in Basel, Switzerland.

Silvia Bächli's Art Style

Bächli has honed her drawing practice on sheets of white paper varying in size, quality, and tone, employing Indian ink, charcoal, gouache, or pastels. Anchoring her work in the body and its movements, she extends it to encompass everything within the realm of emotion. Thus, she unveils a reality composed of fragments and impressions. 

The outcome goes beyond mere painterly moments; the drawings often evoke a cinematic perspective, freezing moments akin to film stills. This perspective applies to bodies, objects, their details, landscapes, gestures, structures, and processes. Her artworks narrate stories without a defined beginning or end, serving as visualizations of moments frozen in time.

“
My work is an approach to something that I don't know exactly and that I only find out by doing. So I need many attempts and wrong ways, until I come to something with which I am satisfied. On paper one can hardly correct – but a next paper lies on the pile, another attempt. In the best case, while working I discover something that is more coherent, more surprising than my own imagination. A successful drawing is simple. It expands into space. It is larger than the paper format.
Silvia Bächli in conversation with Markus Stegmann
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