B I O G R A P H Y
Laura Basterra Sanz (b. 1979) is a Barcelona-born, Brussels-based multidisciplinary artist working across painting, text, and spatial practices. She holds a BA in Fashion Design from URLL and a postgraduate degree in textile printing, and is currently deepening her work through sculpture and spatial art at the RHoK Academy.
Active in Brussels since 2018, Basterra Sanz focuses on gestural abstraction grounded in the body’s impulses and sensory perception. Her work explores the emotional and material dimensions of experience, the interplay between nature and inner life, and the capacity of colour and gesture to reveal forms of embodied knowledge.
Her exhibitions include the Royal Academy of Arts (London), PILAR – Centre for Contemporary Art and Science (Brussels), and international presentations in France. She has also completed a residency at MOTOCO, supported by Kunsthalle Mulhouse and the François Schneider Foundation.
In 2025, she received the International Art Prize awarded by the Paul Smith's Foundation and Winsor & Newton. Her work has been featured in Forbes and Wallpaper*, and is represented in private collections internationally.
E X H I B I T I O N S
2026 - "Summer Exhibition", The Royal Academy Of Arts, London, UK.
2025 - "Defining Your Point of View", Paul Smith Art Space, London, UK.
2025 - Paul Smith Antwerp, Antwerp, BE.
2025 - "On Beauty", Pictorem Gallery, London, UK.
2025 - "Essential: Essence in a Space", RHoK Woluwe, Brussels, BE.
2024 - "Separation, Connection, Circulation", GC De Rinck, Brussels, BE.
2024 - "We Art XL Coup De Coeur", Abbaye de La Cambre, Brussels, BE.
2024 - "La Fin des Semelles", Les Semelles, Charleville-Mézières, FR.
2023 - "Intimate/Synergy", MOTOCO, Mulhouse, FR.
2023 - "Mostly Looking for the Same Things", XIV LAB, London, UK.
2022 - "Hello there, I just wanted to ask how you're doing", PILAR Brussels, Brussels, BE.
2022 - "Art Open Kunst", Espace Vanderborght, Brussels, BE
2021 - "In The Circle of Light", See U Brussels, Brussels, BE.
2021 - "A Question of Lines and Evolution", The Sun-Day Room, Brussels, BE.
A R T I S T S T A T E M E N T
I work with painting and text-based art to explore the unseen: the interplay between the literal and the metaphorical in my relationship with the environment.
I create gestural abstract paintings where movement, intuition, and materiality converge, building layered surfaces that preserve traces of physical engagement with the canvas. I understand colour as frequency and use it intuitively, guided by an organic sense of composition.
I carry the rhythms, processes, and vitality of the natural world into the studio. There, I pour myself into the canvas, seeking to resolve what arises through instinct.
Painting comes first; from there, I expand into text and three-dimensional work, adding layers of sensory experience that echo my gestures.
Words emerge and dissolve on canvases, walls, and objects, treated as both visual and conceptual elements. I play with their sound and meaning, reflecting on themes such as belonging, identity, presence, and the complexities of being in relation.
I investigate the resonance between inner and outer worlds, where perception, emotion, and environment intertwine through empathetic attunement to experience.
At the core of my practice lies the question of freedom: not as an abstract idea, but as something embodied, unfolding naturally through the act of painting.
Laura Basterra Sanz, May 2026
For any enquires please e-mail me: givemeabreakdance [at] proton [dot] me
Follow my studio life and more on INSTAGRAM @kung.fu.mistress or YOUTUBE @LauraBasterraSanz