When you walk through the narrow alleys of Munich’s Schwabing district, past the old bookshops and the cafés where poets once argued over coffee, you might not expect to find a modern artist whose work is as deeply tied to the city as the Frauenkirche is to its skyline. But Jana Bach isn’t just an artist who lives in Munich-she’s one of its quiet, persistent voices. Her paintings, installations, and public interventions don’t scream for attention. They wait. They observe. And then they speak-softly, but unmistakably-about belonging, memory, and the weight of place.
Munich Isn’t Just a Backdrop-It’s a Co-Author
Jana Bach didn’t choose Munich because it was trendy. She didn’t move there for the nightlife or the beer halls. She came because the city’s layered history felt like a puzzle she needed to solve. Born in Hamburg in 1987, she studied fine arts in Berlin, but it was Munich that changed how she saw color, light, and silence. The city’s architecture-baroque facades next to brutalist concrete, medieval churches overshadowed by glass office towers-became her visual grammar. She started painting fragments of walls she saw on her morning walks: peeling plaster revealing decades of paint underneath, cracks shaped like rivers, graffiti that had been painted over but still bled through.
By 2015, she began her series Layered Streets, using mixed media to replicate these textures on canvas. Each piece was titled after a specific street in Munich: Leopoldstraße, 2013, Schwanthalerstraße, Rain. Critics called them ‘urban archaeology.’ Jana called them ‘memories that refused to disappear.’
The Unspoken Rules of Munich’s Art Scene
Munich’s art world has a reputation for being traditional. Galleries here still favor landscape paintings, porcelain sculptures, and classical techniques. Jana’s work-abstract, raw, often made from recycled materials like old train tickets, newspaper clippings, and rusted metal scraps-didn’t fit neatly into that mold. She was rejected by three major Munich galleries before one curator at Galerie im Trappentreu took a chance on her.
That show in 2018, titled What the City Keeps, sold out in two weeks. Not because it was pretty. But because people recognized themselves in it. A woman in her 70s told Jana she saw her late husband’s old work boots in one of the installations. A student said the texture reminded her of the wall she’d scribbled on during her first year at LMU. Jana didn’t plan those connections. She just recorded what was already there.
Public Art That Doesn’t Ask for Permission
Most artists in Munich apply for permits, submit proposals, wait months. Jana works differently. In 2020, during the quietest months of the pandemic, she began placing small, hand-painted ceramic tiles along the Isar River path. Each tile had a single word: Wait, Breathe, Remember. No signature. No plaque. No announcement. People found them. Took photos. Left flowers. Some took the tiles home. Others replaced them with new ones they’d made.
By spring, over 120 tiles had appeared. The city didn’t remove them. No one reported them as vandalism. Instead, local newspapers wrote about them as ‘quiet acts of collective healing.’ Jana never claimed authorship publicly. She didn’t need to. The work was never about her-it was about what the city held when no one was watching.
Her Studio: A Room Full of Silence
Her studio is on the third floor of a 1920s apartment building near the English Garden. No windows face the street. Only one small skylight lets in daylight. She doesn’t use artificial lighting during the day. Her tools are simple: brushes made from squirrel hair, charcoal from burned oak, natural pigments ground from minerals she collects near the Alps. She doesn’t sketch. She doesn’t plan. She walks. She listens. Then she works.
She once told a journalist, ‘I don’t paint what I see. I paint what the city left behind in me.’ That’s why her pieces feel so personal, even when they’re abstract. They’re not about Munich as a tourist destination. They’re about what happens when you live here long enough to feel its rhythm in your bones.
Why Jana Bach Matters Now
Munich is changing. New condos are replacing old workshops. International brands are moving in. The city’s identity is being rewritten by developers and marketers. Jana’s art doesn’t fight that. It doesn’t protest. It preserves. It reminds. Her work is a quiet counter-narrative to the glossy brochures that call Munich ‘elegant,’ ‘historic,’ or ‘bavarian charm.’
She shows the cracks. The forgotten corners. The voices that don’t make it into guidebooks. In a world obsessed with visibility, she makes art that asks you to look closer-to see what’s been ignored, worn down, or buried under layers of progress.
Where to See Her Work
Jana doesn’t have a permanent gallery. Her pieces appear in temporary exhibitions, museums, and public spaces. In 2024, the Lenbachhaus included three of her works in its Contemporary Voices of Bavaria show. You can also find her installations in the basement of the Münchner Stadtmuseum during its seasonal ‘Hidden Histories’ displays. She occasionally opens her studio to small groups by appointment-no website, no social media. You have to ask around. People who know her will tell you where.
Her most recent project, Stille Wände (Silent Walls), began in late 2024. She’s been painting directly onto the walls of abandoned buildings slated for demolition. Each mural is temporary-meant to fade with the structure. She documents them in black-and-white photographs, then lets the buildings go. No one is supposed to know they were there. But someone always does.
What She’s Working On Next
Right now, she’s collecting oral histories from long-time Munich residents-people who’ve lived here since before the Olympics, before the reunification, before the internet. She’s turning their stories into soundscapes, layered beneath her paintings. Visitors to her next show will be able to put on headphones and hear a woman describe her grandmother’s bakery on Sendlinger Straße, while the canvas behind them shows the exact shade of ochre that once covered its walls.
It’s not about nostalgia. It’s about continuity. About how places hold us, even when we think we’ve moved on.
Who is Jana Bach?
Jana Bach is a Munich-based contemporary artist known for her mixed-media paintings and site-specific installations that explore the hidden layers of urban life. Born in 1987, she moved to Munich in her late 20s and has since developed a body of work deeply rooted in the city’s architecture, history, and quiet human moments. Her art is not decorative-it’s archival, emotional, and often temporary.
Where can I see Jana Bach’s art in Munich?
Her work appears in rotating exhibitions at the Lenbachhaus and the Münchner Stadtmuseum. She also has temporary installations in public spaces like the Isar River path and abandoned buildings. There’s no fixed gallery, and she doesn’t maintain a website. The best way to find her current projects is to ask local art collectives or visit the ‘Hidden Histories’ section at the Stadtmuseum during its seasonal displays.
Why doesn’t Jana Bach use social media?
Jana Bach avoids social media because she believes art should exist in physical space, not as a digital image. She wants viewers to encounter her work by accident-on a walk, in a museum basement, near a construction site. She doesn’t want her art to be consumed, liked, or shared. She wants it to be felt. Her silence is part of the work.
Is Jana Bach’s art for sale?
Yes, but not through traditional channels. Her studio pieces are available through private collectors and select galleries like Galerie im Trappentreu. Public installations are never sold-they’re meant to disappear. If you’re interested in acquiring a piece, you typically need a personal introduction. She doesn’t respond to cold inquiries.
What makes her work different from other Munich artists?
Most Munich artists work within the city’s traditional aesthetic-bright colors, folklore, classical forms. Jana works in decay, silence, and absence. She doesn’t celebrate Munich’s beauty; she listens to its wounds. Her materials are scavenged, her methods are slow, and her messages are subtle. She doesn’t make art to impress. She makes it to remember.
If you want to understand Munich beyond the beer tents and the Christmas markets, walk through its forgotten alleys. Look at the walls. Listen. You might just hear what Jana Bach has been painting all along.
