Silvia Steiger1940 Linz / Austria
Works and lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Work: Silvia Steiger is always experimenting. Het work includes individual objects, drawings, paintings, bookworks, work with telepathy, photography, site-specific installations and multiples.

Retrospective 2015: Spring 2015 Museum Belvedere in Heerenveen, Friesland, made a retrospective show, a choice out of 40 years of work by Silvia Steiger.
The title of the exhibition and the catalog was: THE NECESSITY OF A HANDSTAND. Here you find a PDF of the publication (in English and in Dutch), with an introduction on the work by art historian Huub Mous.
Download: The Necessity of a Handstand (pdf)
Download: De Noodzaak van een Handstand(pdf)

The installations: These are created for public spaces. The diversity of materials is inspired by the spaces themselves. Each work is an adventure harnessing the new environment, its conditions and materials. Each time Silvia Steiger aspires to pinpoint the essence of her subject to enable the viewer to project his or her own interpretation.

The multiples: A lengthy period of meditative drawings of variations of the same theme leads very naturally to the multiples, repetitive objects based on a theme. The multiples have been created for private spaces, they are intimate and personal unlike art in a museum which is untouchable.
The multiplication and infiltration of a piece of art into every day life creates a network of people who empathise with the work. This in itself provides great fascination for the artist.

The paintings: Since 1996 until 2007 most paintings have been created on the island of Crete where Silvia Steiger spends periods of up to 3 month at a time working, returning to Amsterdam for the subsequent 3 month spell.
She was inspired by the varied flora of the island to create her series of large paintings.
Remote from the influences and dictates of current trends in the art world Silvia Steiger was free at Crete to be creative.