Eli Schläppi is a Swiss artist working in painting and drawing, born and raised near Basel and based in Hamburg since 2020. After an artistic foundation course at the Kunstgewerbeschule Basel and training in graphic design, she worked for many years as a naturopathic practitioner licensed by the Swiss cantonal authority. She later returned intensively to art through programs in Hamburg, Berlin, and the Pentiment International Summer Academy at Haw Hamburg.

Her abstract practice grows from lived experience, bodily perception, and a close relationship with nature. Long-standing engagement with Chinese medicine, Daoist thought, and East Asian calligraphic traditions informs her sense of gesture, flow, balance, and transformation. Rivers, volcanic landscapes, northern skies, light, and ecological systems inspire sweeping lines and layered colour fields. Works such as “Not green but blue river”, “Hamburg’s Sky-Elbe-Beach”, and “Lanzarote” combine Western abstraction with Eastern philosophical thought and direct engagement with materials.

Schläppi participated in Miniaturtextilkunst 83 in Hannover and its 1984 presentation at the Nederlands Textilmuseum in Tilburg. More recently, her work was shown at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris (2025) and Another Art Museum in Guangzhou (2026). In autumn 2026, she is represented in an international exhibition at the Schlossmuseen Greiz in Germany.