Elsa Gramcko was born 9 April 1925 in Puerto Cabello, Carabobo, Venezuela to a German father and Venezuelan mother.

[5] In 1959, José Gómez Sicre curated her first solo show at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington D.C. She represented Venezuela in the 1959 São Paulo Art Biennial and in the 1964 Venice Biennale.

[2] In 1968 she was awarded the National Art Prize at the Official Salon of Venezuelan Art and in 1966 she became the first woman to obtain the first prize at the D'Empaire Salon held in Maracaibo, Zulia State, Venezuela.

Her work is held in various private and public collections throughout Latin America and worldwide,[2] including Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)[1] and Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.

[7] In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.