The Estate of Josep Grau-Garriga

From 28 November, 2022 to 11 September, 2023. Meier building.

Josep Grau-Garriga, a major innovator in the art of tapestry who experimented across different disciplines using large-format techniques to create his so-called environments.

In the late 1960s, Josep Grau-Garriga, one of the key exponents of the Catalan School of Tapestry, began to experiment with transdisciplinary techniques and with works in large formats, beyond the demands of traditional textile art. He did it through what he called ‘environments’, in which viewers were invited to immerse themselves in the work, in close contact with the materials. Often created in a collective creative process, in these ‘environments’ Grau-Garriga explored new forms of artistic pedagogy in which art and life came together so that the artwork became a shared experience.

In this context, Diàleg de llum (Dialogue with Light, 1986–88) enabled the production and dissemination of textile art to develop new possibilities during that period. Besides the eponymous installation, the exhibition includes a series of photographs, documents and drawings of some of the environments made by the artist.

With these types of works, Grau-Garriga became an international referent in the transformation of tapestry techniques during the second half of the twentieth century.

A research project by Núria Montclús and Esther Grau, in collaboration with Àlex Castro and Alba Clavell.

Artist: Josep Grau-Garriga.

Participants: Núria Montclús, Esther Grau, Àlex Castro, Alba Clavell

Sant Cugat delVallès.(EFE) -The municipality of Sant Cugat and the family of the local artist Josep Grau-Garriga have signed a declaration of intent to define the lines of work of the future Grau-Garriga Center for Textile Art.

The mayor of Sant Cugat, Mercè Conesa, and the artist’s daughter, Esther Grau-Garriga, on behalf of the family, today signed the agreement to create the center, which also intends to dedicate itself to contemporary textile art.

Josep Grau-Garriga was born in Sant Cugat in 1928 and died in Angers in 2011. He was a Catalan muralist artist and one of the innovators of contemporary tapestry, whose works are in the best museums in the world.

The set of originals that will be exhibited in the new center will come mainly from three funds: the city hall collection, the Grau-Garriga Foundation deposit and other deposits such as Joan Mateo’s, a personal friend of Josep Grau-Garriga.

The agreement contemplates that, initially, the future center will be located in the current Museum of Contemporary Tapestry and in the Masia Can Quitèria, and the intention is to convert this project into a reference center throughout the State.

Translated from Spanish

They conjure up images of unicorns, knights jousting, women playing lutes, lofty, stony Gothic castles. But they can also be elephant heads, transparent tubes, waterfalls, telephone switchboards, constructions that viewers can walk into and be enclosed.

Perhaps for want of a more suitable definition, a startling variety of flat and three‐dimensional works in materials from silken threads to metal fibers are being called tapestry.

“Weaving is almost as obsolete a term as tapestry for what is happening today,” says Jack Lenor Larsen, the designer and former weaver, whose textiles showroom is a showcase for the works of many of today's artisans. Mr. Larsen, who is co‐authoring a book with Mildred Constantine of the Museum of Modern Art on the new hangings, prefers to call them “fiber forms” or “art fabrics” while he waits for someone to conjure a more apt word.