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With the exhibition HAPPY HOUR, Anna Laudel Düsseldorf presents a selection of works by the renowned artist Elvira Bach. At the heart of the presentation is her painting practice, featuring her iconic female figures accompanied by motifs of plants, feminine symbolism, and ceramic sculptures.

Celebrated as part of the Neue Wilde movement, Bach’s expressively painted women have stood for self-confidence, strength, and independence since the early 1980s. In works such as Happy Hour (2002), Mit Nelke (2012), and Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung (1992), her figures appear alongside symbolic elements like hearts, crosses, and anchors, as well as everyday details such as wine or cigarettes. These motifs interweave personal experience, emotional intensity, and subtle irony. Bach varies her visual language through paper collages, acrylic paintings, and large-scale works that feel simultaneously intimate, powerful, and poetic.

A recurring theme in Bach’s work is the motif of plants and fruit—symbols of vitality, sensuality, and transience. Exotic flowers and strawberries recall Voltaire’s notion of optimism, captured in the closing line of his satirical novella Candide: “We must cultivate our garden.” In Bach’s interpretation, this idea is transposed into the feminine: the female body becomes a site of experience—of pleasure, power, and vulnerability. Sensuality and self-assertion merge, and female emancipation unfolds as an open, vibrant cosmos beyond fixed roles and definitions.

In addition to her natural motifs, Bach often references universal symbols such as the heart, cross, and anchor—representing love, faith, and hope—thus linking personal narrative with a collective visual vocabulary.

With HAPPY HOUR, Anna Laudel Düsseldorf highlights the multifaceted nature of Elvira Bach’s œuvre. Her art moves between the everyday and the exotic, seriousness and playful self-reflection. It unfolds as a space where personal biography and universal themes intertwine—showing why Elvira Bach has remained a defining voice in contemporary art for more than four decades.