Josep Grau-Garriga is one of the great artists of this discipline.
Sabrina Amrani Gallery in Madrid presents Contextureextensive exposition of Josep Grau-Garriga (1928-2011). Until not too many years ago, textile art was one of the most marginalized practices by institutions and art history.emporáneo has regained the interest of the market, critics and prestigious collections. Who visited ARCO Madrid 2024 was able to verify it. Textiles occupied that alternative position to painting and sculpture that for decades was attributed to photography, today something absent in the large art fairs.
Three names of artists can be considered cult figures in the discipline today: the pioneer Aurelia Muñoz (1926-2011), with work in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan; Teresa Lanceta (1951), and Josep Grau-Garriga, strict contemporary of Aurèlia. Inspired by the famous manifesto, the three On Weavingreleased by Anni Albers (1899-1994) in 1965 and precedent of the Wall Hangings exhibition in the aforementioned New York museum in 1969.
Aurèlia is already an established creator; Lanceta has exhibited successfully in Barcelona, Valencia, Valladolid in recent years and in the beautiful museum of Ceret, The memory woven in 2024; and Grau-Garriga is the most experimental and international of the three. If Lanceta’s tapestry has a clear influence of ethnic and Berber textiles and Muñoz’s of rural and primitive art with the addition of kinetic elements, in the case of Grau-Garriga a diversity of plastic languages. As with ceramics Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró or Miquel Barcelóthe recovery of the artist’s manual or artisanal work on natural materials regains a singular and exclusive value in the midst of the wave of digitalization. The textile associated with painting as an instrumental technique at its service has always enjoyed prestige in informal art.. Suffice it to remember the work of Millares, by Tàpies or by Manuel Rivera, linked to the mechanical fabric, involved in a process of purifying the forms of artistic expression to their limits.
The novelty of the creators that we discuss here consists of giving the tapestry autonomy as an art object in itself overcoming the erroneous identification with the domestic, the decorative, the functional, that associated with embroidery skills and, finally, with the world of the feminine according to old patterns. Textile and metallic warps will return to the international art scene through today’s names such as Chiaru Shiota (1972) or Tomás Saraceno (1973).
Grau-Garriga was a key artist in the renewal of tapestry and contemporary textile art, both nationally and internationally. Before 1960 he was already collaborating with the manufacturing Aymat of carpets and tapestries and created the Escola Catalana del Tapís, which allowed him to work with artists such as Joan Miró, Josep María Subirachs and Antoni Tàpies.
In Paris he met Jean Lurcat (1892-1966), master renovator of the tapestry based on a rereading of the Gothic tapestry, for which he was fascinated. Later, impressed by the material and gestural informalism of Jean Dubuffet, begins to question his practice and redirects his research towards the weight of the material as a key element to achieve the autonomy of textiles as a work of art. From that moment on, introduces new materials of a closer and less noble character into its tapestries, such as jute, rope, hemp or metallic thread, even fragments of fabrics and used clothing. He also began to combine threads of different thicknesses and use the carpet knot technique, so that the material began to express itself in his works.
Starting in 1962, the inaugural date of the International Lausanne Biennial, the radical creations of artists from Eastern Europe and the United States They try to redefine the coded language of upholstery. These works, often monumental, break free from the wall to invade space. The terminology New Upholsterywhich ascribes these pieces to the sphere of craftsmanship, is progressively replaced by that of Fiber Art or Textile Art. The de-hierarchization of artistic media and the dissolution of the barriers between painting, sculpture and the rest of the plastic techniques will no longer stop.
The search for textile liberation and the volumetric games of the materials used lead the artist towards a progressive experimentation of the relationship of fabric with space, which leads to a gradual abandonment of rigidity and two-dimensionality characteristics of the tapestries and, consequently, the use of the loom and the preparatory cardboard for their making. Shortly after, the appearance of their originals environnements ephemeral in interior spaces of monumental buildings and also in public spaces around the world. These environnements were based on textile compositions that expanded through the space and challenged the viewer, who became a participant in the work by inhabiting and surrounding it. In some cases this participatory nature was even more concrete, since it was based on a collective and collaborative creation process which materialized in the realization of workshops previous sessions with diverse groups, in which Grau-Garriga claimed the pedagogical and community nature of art. Textile art expands to public space, leaving behind the tapestry wall. More than twenty years before contemporary art mainstream I would discover it.
In the 80s, converted into authentic textile sculptures, Grau-Garriga’s tapestries attracted the attention of curators Americans and for many years, would undertake numerous projects in the United States, Canada and Latin America. Until recently he was an artist better known in France and America than in Spain. Now and after the opening of the Grau-Garriga Center in San Cugat del Vallés in 2019 and the exhibitions dedicated to the author is the moment of his definitive recovery.
