Texas Patti’s Munich: Art and Attitude

When you think of Munich, you picture beer halls, alpine views, and centuries-old cathedrals. But tucked between the old-world charm and modern design studios is a quieter, bolder side of the city-one shaped by artists, outsiders, and performers who refuse to fit into neat categories. Among them is Texas Patti, a name that doesn’t belong in a Wikipedia entry but echoes loudly in underground galleries, late-night cabarets, and the back rooms of queer bars where art isn’t curated-it’s lived.

Who Is Texas Patti?

She’s not a celebrity in the traditional sense. No TV show. No branded merchandise. No Wikipedia page. But if you’ve been to Munich’s underground art scene since the early 2010s, you’ve likely seen her. Texas Patti is a performer, a painter, a provocateur, and a storyteller who moved from Texas to Germany in 2011, chasing something she couldn’t name back home. She didn’t come for the beer. She came for the silence.

In Texas, she says, people talked too much about what you were supposed to be. In Munich, people didn’t care-until you made them. And then they watched. Hard.

Her early performances in Munich were raw: a single spotlight, a red dress, a boombox playing 90s country music, and her telling stories about growing up in a small town where being different meant being hunted. No choreography. No costumes. Just her voice, cracked and honest, and the way she’d stare into the crowd like she was daring someone to look away.

The Art That Doesn’t Sell

Texas Patti’s paintings aren’t hanging in the Pinakothek. They’re taped to the walls of Die Kiste, a tiny bar in the Schwabing district that closed in 2023 but still lives in memory. Her canvases are small-mostly 12x16 inches-made from thrift store frames and acrylics bought with tips from her weekend shows. The subjects? Forgotten women. Prostitutes from the 1980s. A grandmother who drove a truck. A trans woman who survived three surgeries and still danced at Oktoberfest.

One piece, titled "I Didn’t Ask for This", shows a woman in a cowboy hat, holding a shotgun, with tears made of gold leaf. It sold for €80 to a student who later framed it and hung it in his dorm. No gallery ever wanted it. No collector ever called. But it’s still the most talked-about artwork in the neighborhood.

She doesn’t sell to make money. She sells to make sure someone remembers.

Munich’s Hidden Underground

Munich isn’t Berlin. It doesn’t have the same reputation for radical art or open rebellion. But that’s the point. While Berlin drowned in noise, Munich stayed quiet-and in that quiet, something real grew. Texas Patti became part of a loose network of artists, drag performers, ex-activists, and former pornographers who met every Thursday at a basement café called Die Rote Laterne.

There, no one asked about your past. No one asked if you were "real." They just asked: "What are you working on?"

She started hosting monthly "No Rules" nights-open mic, open canvas, open body. A poet read about his mother’s suicide. A retired nurse performed a monologue about euthanasia. A man in a full-body suit of glitter danced to a lullaby. Texas Patti always closed the night. No setlist. No script. Just her, a microphone, and a single question: "What did you lie to yourself about today?"

People came back. Not because it was entertaining. Because it was true.

Why Texas? Why Munich?

She never explains it well. "Texas taught me how to scream. Munich taught me how to whisper," she once said in an interview with a local zine that only printed 200 copies. But you can see it in her work.

Texas gave her the attitude-the grit, the swagger, the refusal to apologize. Munich gave her the space to be messy, to be broken, to be boring sometimes. In Texas, she was a freak. In Munich, she was a person.

She doesn’t perform in clubs anymore. She doesn’t do interviews. She doesn’t post on social media. But every winter, she sets up a small table outside the Hauptbahnhof with a sign: "Tell me your secret. I’ll paint it."

People line up. Sometimes ten. Sometimes two. She listens. She sketches. She doesn’t charge. She doesn’t ask for a name. She just says, "You’re not alone."

The Legacy That Doesn’t Need a Name

There’s no documentary about Texas Patti. No book. No podcast. But if you walk through the back alleys of Schwabing, you’ll find her art still there-on dumpsters, on brick walls, on the inside of bathroom stalls. A painted cowboy boot. A single red rose. A phrase in German: "Du bist nicht allein."

She didn’t want fame. She didn’t want followers. She wanted to be seen. And in a city that often hides behind tradition, she made sure someone else felt seen too.

That’s the art. That’s the attitude.

What’s Left When the Spotlight Goes Out?

Most performers fade. They burn out. They get replaced. Texas Patti didn’t. She just stopped performing. And in stopping, she became more real.

Her influence isn’t in numbers. It’s in the quiet moments: a teenager who saw her at Die Rote Laterne and started writing poetry. A nurse who painted her own story after hearing Texas Patti’s voice. A man who moved from Texas to Munich just to find someone like her.

She never said she was an artist. She never called herself a performer. She just showed up. Again. And again. And again.

And that’s the kind of art that lasts.