Cruz, Ángela de la

After studying Philosophy at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Angela de la Cruz went on to study Art at Chelsea College of Art, Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Fine Art in London, the city where she has lived and worked since 1989. De la Cruz conducts an interrogation of painting-as-object. Adopting a social and critical stance, she expresses her critique of both society and the medium through deforming her own largely-monochrome paintings, breaking, tearing and distorting stretcher bars and canvas until they more closely resemble sculptural objects. In this way, she also forcefully expresses the contemporary need to review the traditional pictorial genre. Aluminium is one of her other working materials, to which she applies the same methodology, always exploring the relationship between the illusionistic or representational space of painting and the physical presence of sculpture. De la Cruz’s self-destructive approach to painting can be seen as an energetic, emotional, visceral and ironic take on the world.

Since the early 1990s, she has presented her works in numerous venues, including the Museo Cabañas, Guadalajara, Mexico (2021), Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela (2019), Centre d’Art La Panera, Lleida (2015), Camden Arts Centre, London (2010), Culturgest, Porto (2006), Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla (2005) and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Vigo (2004). Her work is in collections such as Tate Collection, London; Patio Herreriano, Valladolid; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Fundació “la Caixa” and MACBA, Barcelona.