CLAUDIA DE GRANDI

“To me, my paintings are as though sounds and colours interconnect and occur in the space of the canvas at the same time, like a spiral of space-time happening…..“

-Claudia De Grandi

Claudia is a transnational artist concerned with how artists address identity and the modern mind. She grew up in São Paulo with a Brazilian mother and Italian father and has lived in Britain for over 20 years. Sao Paolo is also home to the largest Japanese diaspora in the world, since the first wave of immigration in 1908. It was inevitable that after studying the history of Japanese and Brazilian modernism Claudia would succumb to the spell of Japanese calligraphy and allow it to harness her flow and discipline her mind.

Her large canvases are a process of application and removal, colour on colour, mark making and minimalism. “I might start a painting with a very thin dark layer like black, I will brush it away until it is transparent, and I carry on removing until there’s nothing, then I apply a blue. Applying and removing. I want the viewer to see the colours. At first sight the paintings might seem minimal, but there is a lot going on. There are colours that merge and there are many colours beneath the darkness.”