Galleria Gracis is delighted to welcome Lluís Lleó to Italy with his exhibition “PITTORE”: a powerful immersion into the chromatic universe of this internationally renowned artist. The exhibition will run from the 25th of September to the 15th of November 2025 and promises to transform this historic gallery into a living dialogue between matter and emotion, typical of Lleó’s style.

Following the success of the exhibition that Galleria Gracis dedicated to the renowned Antoni Tàpies in 2023, Lluís Lleó is the ideal artist to take up such a visual and conceptual legacy. Even the famous art critic Robert Hughes has compared the two artists in the past, highlighting how, despite their differences, they share a deep connection with the material, spirituality and memory of Catalan tradition: ‘When we look back in twenty years’ time, we will consider the emergence of Lleó as important as that of the young Tàpies, now long gone’.

A multifaceted artist, Lluís Lleó represents a unique combination of tradition and modernity. Born in Barcelona in 1961, he inherited from his grandfather and father a passion for the artistic complexes of the Vall de Boí in Catalonia, home to the highest concentration of Romanesque architecture in Europe. Lluís developed a self-taught education from a young age, learning traditional techniques through drawing and embracing an architectural vision of painting. His art is distinguished by the application of the fresco technique through the use of pure pigments, blending sculpture and painting into a “spatial pictorial organicism”, a technique handed down by his father, who lived in Italy for over a year and fell in love with the frescoes of Giotto, Cimabue and Piero della Francesca.

‘I visited Italy for the first time in the early 1990s. I fell in love with it immediately,’ says the artist, explaining his connection to this land. His latest exhibitions reveal his vocation as an architect and his ongoing search for new forms of expression, paying homage to the artists who inspired him, such as the American Eva Hesse and the Greek sculptor Jannis Kounellis. This dialogue between European roots and American modernity has given his work a distinctive voice that, during the 1980s, also found expression on metal plates through the art of engraving.

His first solo exhibition at the Arteunido gallery in Barcelona in 1988 marked the beginning of a career that has led him to exhibit in renowned galleries around the world. His stay in New York also allowed him to come into contact with the transcendental influences of artists such as Rothko and Agnes Martin, as well as the formal innovations of Ellsworth Kelly and Jasper Johns.

Currently residing between Ampurdan and various international destinations, Lleó is known for challenging the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, pursuing an artistic practice rooted in tradition but open to the contemporary. His works are present in prestigious collections and museums in major cities around the world, while his artistic uniqueness has earned him the showing of its public work “Morpho’s Nest in a Cadmium House”, exhibited between 52nd and 56th Streets on Park Avenue in New York (an honor reserved for only a dozen artists in history, including Haring and Christo).

His continuous search for expression and flexibility in dialoguing with different artistic forms make Lluís Lleó one of the most unique and appreciated artists on the current scene, and Galleria Gracis is delighted to make him the protagonist of its next exhibition.

Galleria Gracis opening hours: Monday-Friday, 10AM-1PM | 2-6 PM

Saturday by appointment
Free entrance T +39 02 877 807; gracis@gracis.com

For further information
Press Office
Agenzia Guardans Cambó S.r.l.
Via Broletto, 46 – 20121 Milano
press@guardanscambo.com