Hores de llum i de foscor, 1986

Basel 2018
Hores de llum i de foscor

Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Salon 94

Mixed Media
Tapestry made of cotton, wool, silk, synthetic fiber, clothing
700.0 x 320.0 x 10.0 (cm)
275.6 x 126.0 x 3.9 (inch)
Hores de llum i de foscor (Hours of light and darkness) is a monumental, emblematic fiber work by a pioneer of contemporary textile art, Josep Grau-Garriga. The tapestry is composed of cotton, wool, silk, synthetic fiber, as well as clothing from his family. The addition of ‘personal’ items is representative of the emotional dimension that the Catalonian artist brought to his works. This evocative piece embodies an expressionist shift in the history of tapestry championed by Grau-Garriga during the 1970s–1980s: a formal and conceptual change representing an inextricable dialectics between personal and political matters. Grau-Garriga’s fundamental contribution to the genre was defined by Arnau Puig in his monograph published in 1986, the same year as the creation of this work: ‘In his mind a project came into being that he realized little by little, and that consisted of demystifying the high value traditionally accorded to the art of weaving in order to make it an act, rather than a submission to established principles and rules, an act of creative and expressive freedom.’