Claudia De Grandi grew up in São Paulo state of Brazil where a vast cultural meeting of different backgrounds influenced her views of the world and inspired her quest for the exploration of artistic means of expression. She has now lived in the UK for over 30 years establishing her artistic career in East Sussex with a studio based in Hastings.
She gained a BA Fine Art (Hons) with Distinction from the University of Greenwich and continued her studies with a MA Theory and Practice in Transnational Art, University of the Arts London - Camberwell.
De Grandi paints pure emotions, the brushes are delicate and the colours deep. Her ethereal abstract paintings suspend time and location, the paintings recall upon the viewer's memories and feelings. Her large canvases are a process of application and removal of colour on colour. She calls upon introspection and a place that no one else knows apart from the inner self.
Her works can be found in private and public collections around the world from the Americas to Japan.
Claudia De Grandi is to be congratulated on her achievement in the depth of her understanding of abstract painting and her transformation of radical abstract art into a contemporary mode of painting which returns it to reality. Her work is certainly poetic, certainly spiritual, certainly musical and deeply moving. But further to this it provides very important ways forward for such painting, beyond the deterioration of abstract painting into academic mannerism and into an authentic deeply emotional abstracted painting of great power.
(Stephen Newton 2022) Download full essay