Josep Grau-Garriga was born in 1929 in Sant Cugat del Vallès. He lived and worked in Catalonia until 1992, then in the French region of Angers until his death in 2011.
In the 1970s and 1980s, having become veritable textile sculptures, Grau-Garriga's tapestries attracted the attention of Philippe de Montebello, the young American curator and future director of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, who proposed to present Grau-Garriga's first big retrospective at the Houston Fine Arts Museum (Texas) in 1970. This collaboration marked the beginning of an international career that led the artist to realize numerous projects in the United States, Canada and South America, with solo exhibitions in institutions such as LACMA (Los Angeles) in 1974 and the Museo Rufino Tamayo of Mexico in 1987.
Josep Grau-Garriga is also shown in some important group exhibitions such as, De l'ombre à la lumière; Tapisseries catalanes, from Picasso to Grau-Garriga at the Musée Jean Lurçat in 2011 (Angers); Decorum. Tapis et tapisseries d'artistes at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2013; Creative Crossroads: The Art of Tapestry at the Denver Art Museum in 2015 (Denver, USA); Tapisseries nomades. Toms Pauli Foundation; Twenty century's collection at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne in 2016 (Switzerland) and the reopening of the Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud in 2017 (Perpignan).
Especially, 2020 is marked by the presentation of one his major historic installations, Altarpiece of the Hanged People (1972-1976) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as part of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney NIRIN. 2019 is also marked by the opening of Grau-Garriga's Centre of Textile Art at Sant-Cugat del Vallès, in the area of Barcelona, his native and living region for many years. In 2018, in collaboration with Salon 94, Galerie Nathalie Obadia also presented a huge and historic work of the artist at Art Basel Unlimited. That year, his work was also exhibited at the Quadrilatère de Beauvais as part of the show Muralomade and at the Fondation Villa Datris (L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue) within the show Tissage/Tressage... quand la sculpture défile. Galerie Nathalie Obadia dedicated him a show in Brussels, unveiling an exceptional set of tapestries and drawings from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Josep Grau-Garriga's work is part of significant collections in France and abroad, such as in the United States the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum (New York), the Denver Art Museum (Denver), the Houston Museum of fine Arts (Houston), the Cordoba Museum (Lincoln) and the Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Centre (Oklahoma); in Switzerland, the Toms Pauli Foundation (Lausanne), the Gandur Foundation for Art (Geneva) and the Ghisla Art Collection (Locarno); in Mexico, the Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporaneo (Mexico) ; in Chile, the Museo Salvador Allende (Santiago); in Spain, the contemporary art museums of Barcelona, Vilafamès of Elche and the fine arts museums of Seville and Alicante, the Museo Montserrat (Montserrat) of the Fundacio Vila Casas and of the Banco Sabadell Foundation in Barcelona; in France, the work of Josep Grau-Garriga is part of the collections of the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Musée Jean-Lurçat and the Musée des Beaux-ars d'Angers, the Musée Réattu (Arles), the Musée Cantini (Marseille), the Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud (Perpignan), the Musée du château des ducs de Wurtemberg (Montbéliard), the Musée de la Ville (Montpellier), the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Saint Lo, as well as many other FRAC's collections.
Josep Grau-Garriga'work has been represented by la Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels, since 2016.