20th - 21st Century Spanish

Xavier Grau trained at the School of Fine Arts of Barcelona, starting out as a sculptor before shifting his concerns to painting. His early works are defined by a monochromatic and geometric approach, within an anti-conceptual line that would connect him with what would end up being the , originally made up by José Manuel Broto (1949), Gonzalo Tena (1950) and Javier Rubio (1952), all of them related to the French movement.

His contact with the international avant-garde also exposed him to the influence of American Abstraction. Throughout the 1980s his practice was defined by gesture and colour, working without preparatory sketches following the method known as critical automatism. In the mid 1980s his increasing admiration for Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) and Philip Guston (1913-1980) led him to incorporate figurative elements.

In 1981 Grau began to teach at the School of Fine Arts of Barcelona.

Worth underscoring among his most many exhibitions is his participation in 1976 in Por una crítica de la pintura, in Barcelona, where the presented its magazine with the backing of Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012). Grau also took part in seminal group shows in the 1980s, of which we would single out 1980 and 26 pintores, 13 críticos. In the following years he exhibited individually at Galería Maeght in Barcelona (1982, 1985 and 1988) and in Galería Buades in Madrid (1980, 1983 and 1987) among others. In 1997, the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica of Barcelona organised a retrospective of his work.