Born in Switzerland, Friederike Vahlbruch studied art at the Institut für Kunsterzieher Münster from 1983, but transferred to the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1984, where she graduated as a master student in 1987. Vahlbruch has lived and worked in Cologne since 1991, was awarded the Simplizissimus Förderpreis in 2005 and the “Neustart Kultur” scholarship from the Stiftung Kunstfonds in 2022 and was accepted into the Künstlersonderbund in 2019, whose members represent contemporary realism.