In 1940, Marta Palau went into exile with her family to Tijuana (Mexico), after the defeat of the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939). In 1955 she began her studies in painting and sculpture at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda”; in Mexico City. She also studied engraving with Guillermo Silva Santamaría at the Taller de la Ciudadela in Mexico City, as well as with Paul Lingren at San Diego State University.

In the late 1960s she moved to Barcelona to study textile techniques with Josep Grau Garriga and, from then on, made this medium an integral part of her practice. In the mid-1980s, Palau re-dimensioned her sculptures as indigenous magical objects, and in 1990, the figure of Naualli (sorceress, witch, or protective woman in Nahuatl) became a frequent motif in her work.

Alluding to the ancestral and the ritualistic in her work around Naualli, Marta Palau often interweaves vaginal images and various organic materials, such as plant fibers, earth, clay, and salt, to pose as symbolic guardians in contrast to the hegemonic paradigms of Western aesthetics.

Similarly, Palau strained the barriers between sculpture and architecture with the creation of ephemeral murals and large-scale installations with barriers made of woven straw mats, tree branches, or found wood.

In 1994, she was awarded First Prize at the Havana Biennial. In 2010, the Mexican state awarded her the National Prize for Arts and Literature in the Fine Arts category. Her works have been included in important exhibitions, such as Radical Women: Latin American Art 1960–1985 (2018), organized by the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles) or Entre la tierra y lo Divino (2023), at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art – ISLAA (New York). In 2025, retrospective solo exhibitions will be held at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC, Mexico City) and at the Tàpies Foundation (Barcelona).

Her work is also part of important public and private collections, including: Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC – Mexico City, Mexico), Museum of Contemporary Art (San Diego, United States), Art Museum of the Americas (AMA – Washington D.C., United States), Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (Santiago, Chile), Museo Universitario del Chopo (Mexico City, Mexico), Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico City, Mexico), Museo de Arte Abstracto Manuel Felguerez (Zacatecas, Mexico), Museo de Managua (Managua, Nicaragua), Museo Rufino Tamayo (Mexico City, Mexico).