Xavier Grau

Xavier Grau (Barcelona, Spain, 1951 – 2020) promoted, together with Broto, Gonzalo Tena and Javier Rubio one of the main discussions about Spanish art in the seventies. These artists introduced the first edition of the Trama magazine, which became an art manifesto that claimed the painting as an autonomous exercise.

Grau inherits the distinctive character of abstract expressionism, a source both expressive and emotional power. Strongly related to the New York Art School, and particularly to De Kooning, Gorky and Guston, Grau’s painting changes for an abstraction that keeps the internal tension between colour and drawing, by avoiding the reduction of colour and its surface movement.

His work forms part of museums and public collections such as Colección Los Bragales (Santander, Spain), Colección de Arte Contemporáneo “La Caixa” (Barcelona, Spain), MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain) or MNCARS Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid, Spain).