Andrea Grau

Andrea Grau (b. 2001, Lima, Peru) is a Peruvian painter whose practice investigates painting as a site where emotional experience, material behavior, and embodied gesture converge. Working primarily with oil, charcoal, and diluted gesso on canvas, she approaches painting as a process of negotiation rather than representation, allowing uncertainty, gravity, absorption, and chance to actively shape each work. Her paintings emerge through an ongoing dialogue between control and surrender, where the physical properties of the material become inseparable from the emotional conditions from which they arise.

Grounded in an understanding of fabric as a permeable and responsive surface, Grau explores painting as a way of approaching what words cannot fully articulate. Gestural marks, fragmented calligraphic forms, exposed stretcher bars, and visible traces of making register an intimate process in which the material itself participates in acts of thinking, remembering, and feeling.

Grau received her BFA in Studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where she studied in both the Painting and Fiber and Material Studies departments as a Presidential Merit Scholarship recipient. She has presented solo exhibitions including Vagar en lo Opaco (Vesper Tzu, Lima, 2026), Fragmentos de un Manuscrito (La Rebelde, Lima, 2025), and Night of Bliss, Days of Blues (Ginsberg + Tzu, Lima, 2025). Her work has also been exhibited at ALA Projects (New York and Santo Domingo), Pinta Art Fair (Lima), and Salon 21 (New York). She will participate in an upcoming residency at Cobertizo, Mexico.