Xavier Grau studied at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, where he would later give classes as a lecturer. In the mid-1970s Grau formed part of the group conceived around the magazine Trama, along with José Manuel Broto, Gonzalo Tena and Javier Rubio, with the intention of recovering painting from the perspective of abstraction versus conceptualism, linked to the French support-surface movement. The evolution of his work progressed from the formal, monochrome, structured simplicity found in his early pieces of the 1970s to a more gestural abstraction with influences of American abstract expressionism.
He has exhibited in the Galerie Maeght in Paris (1989), the Galería Luis Adelantado in Valencia (1993) and the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona (1997), among others, and his work is present in the collections of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the IVAM in Valencia, and the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona.
