Irene Grau was born in Valencia. She now lives and works in Santiago de Compostela. She holds a BA and a PhD in art from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Grau uses a variety of media —including painting, installation and photography— to explore the relationship between humans and nature. One of the constants in her work is her depiction of landscape, both literally —as an artistic genre and an aesthetic element in her work— and conceptually, through abstractions that challenge and redefine our relationship with the environment.
Grau explores the possibilities of colour and black-and-white painting in her work. Many of her works are series, arising out of rigorous research that sometimes extends to the exhibition hall itself. Drawing on the legacy of schools such as land art and minimalism, Grau examines how anthropocentric perception influences our own experience of the environment. Examples include her ▲ series (2015), in which piles of pigments provide a chromatic contrast to a range of natural environments, and on what is left (2019), which builds on a large in situ piece on the desolate landscape left by major forest fires in Galicia in 2017 and uses it to reflect on processes of environmental degradation triggered by human activity.
Grau has won several major awards in her career, including Apertura Madrid 2022, Generaciones 2018, the 2017 Gas Natural Fenosa Scholarships for Artistic Creation Abroad and the Isaac Díaz Pardo Prize for Plastic Arts 2021 in A Coruña (Spain). In 2016 she was included in the Forbes list of top European artists aged under thirty (30 Under 30 Europe: The Arts). She has exhibited internationally at venues including the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (IVAM), the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) in Wisconsin, the Maus Contemporary in Birmingham (Alabama) and the Appleton in Lisbon. Her work can also be found in public and private collections around the world, including the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) in Wisconsin, the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) in Madrid, the Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia (FCAYC) in Leon and the Fundación DKV in Valencia.
Irene Grau was born in Valencia. She now lives and works in Santiago de Compostela. She holds a BA and a PhD in art from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Grau uses a variety of media —including painting, installation and photography— to explore the relationship between humans and nature. One of the constants in her work is her depiction of landscape, both literally —as an artistic genre and an aesthetic element in her work— and conceptually, through abstractions that challenge and redefine our relationship with the environment.
Grau explores the possibilities of colour and black-and-white painting in her work. Many of her works are series, arising out of rigorous research that sometimes extends to the exhibition hall itself. Drawing on the legacy of schools such as land art and minimalism, Grau examines how anthropocentric perception influences our own experience of the environment. Examples include her ▲ series (2015), in which piles of pigments provide a chromatic contrast to a range of natural environments, and on what is left (2019), which builds on a large in situ piece on the desolate landscape left by major forest fires in Galicia in 2017 and uses it to reflect on processes of environmental degradation triggered by human activity.
Grau has won several major awards in her career, including Apertura Madrid 2022, Generaciones 2018, the 2017 Gas Natural Fenosa Scholarships for Artistic Creation Abroad and the Isaac Díaz Pardo Prize for Plastic Arts 2021 in A Coruña (Spain). In 2016 she was included in the Forbes list of top European artists aged under thirty (30 Under 30 Europe: The Arts). She has exhibited internationally at venues including the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (IVAM), the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) in Wisconsin, the Maus Contemporary in Birmingham (Alabama) and the Appleton in Lisbon. Her work can also be found in public and private collections around the world, including the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) in Wisconsin, the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) in Madrid, the Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia (FCAYC) in Leon and the Fundación DKV in Valencia.