6 - XAVIER GRAU MASIP (Barcelona, 1951-2020)

XAVIER GRAU MASIP (Barcelona, 1951-2020) "Pelikan II", 1997. Oil on canvas. Signed, dated and titled on the back. Measurements: 240 x 200 cm. Xavier Grau was formed in the School of Fine Arts of Barcelona where, years later, he will exercise for a time the teaching. He began within the conceptual art, but since 1976 he devoted himself fully to painting. That same year he participated in the exhibition "Por una crítica de la pintura" in Barcelona, with a group of artists from the "Trama" magazine. He was part of the current called "painting-painting", which emerged in reaction to conceptualism and had great strength in Catalonia, claiming the pictorial practice from the perspective of abstract language. Grau is close to abstract expressionism as a source of expressiveness and emotion, akin to the New York school, De Kooning, Gorky and Gouston, and his language will evolve towards an abstraction that maintains the internal tension between color and drawing without reducing the vividness of color or the movement of its surfaces, contained by a rhythmic formal structure. Thus, although initially the theoretical aspects prevail in his work, they will gradually give way to intuition and the enhancement of gesture and color. His work tends more and more to leave figurative references aside in favor of a less evident but also more internalized reflection. In recent years, Grau has progressively stripped his work of figurative allusions, erasing with them the satire influenced by Guston, on the way to a more silent and introspective painting. Among his personal exhibitions are those held at the Maeght gallery in Paris (1989), the Salvador Riera and Carles Taché galleries in Barcelona (1992; 1994 and 1995), the Luis Adelantado gallery in Valencia (1993) and the Antonio Machón gallery in Madrid (2002). He is represented at the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the MACBA in Barcelona, the Centro Conde Duque in Madrid and the Jaume Morera in Lleida.