Irena-Gayatri Horvat was born in Zagreb. Since early childhood she has been curious in discovering the beauty of nature, its phases and gifts, the sanctuary of life and the strength it provides us with. The intertwining of life and nature in Gayatri’s life grew into a co-existence, meditation, receiving and selfless giving, which she kept in her poetry or her drawing pad, where she used pictures to note her attempts of seeing into the mythical secrets of human existence and the destined passing though life. Poetry, drawing, painting and especially books on philosophy liberated her emotional system and space for acquiring new ideas and starting creative processes, as well as diving into the psyche and the mythologies of the world which surrounds her, but also this evoked the making of personal poetic and rich painting system of signs. Led by curiosity and challenge in discovering multicultural spiritual values, she travelled the world: she went to India, Nepal, Tibet, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, South and Central America and Europe. She was discovering their natural beauties and specific landscapes, while at the same time taking in their wealth, spirituality, art and specific values in the cosmic system. She started studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, at the Department of Pedagogy. During her studies, as a result of lucky circumstances and quality guidance in the class of Professor Miroslav Šutej, an exceptional painter and graphic artist, Gayatri found her suggestive painting expression, as paraphrasing emotions inside paintings and graphic paintings in mixed media, which could most fully express the essence of her suggestive spiritual strength. Besides painting she also enrolled in Professor Tišljar’s Class of Applied Graphics. She graduated in 2008 under the mentorship of Professor Ante Rašić (her diploma work was supervised by Professor Šutej+). Her quest and a wish to become acquainted with different ambiences, participating in painting colonies around the world, meeting various cultural values and customs have given her a lot of knowledge which she uses while painting, drawing and creating assemblages. Her landscape of blue skies or mountain tops, morning mists or evening sunsets, which mark the painting surface, hold comprehensive structural accounts, saturated with emotional expression of a powerful artistic form, where sometimes she adds the old Croatian Glagolitic Script to support dramaturgy and semantics of a painting. Her way of life, her philosophy, an imminent invention and aesthetic modulation, set her apart as its most important representative in Croatian contemporary art. She have spent much of her time exploring the intersection of myth, mind and society; existence and influence of elemental being on myth and the reality of the region where she was travelled. Irena Gayatri Horvat is a contemporary painter who in her unusual approach to life and her unconventional visions realized a number of noticed emotionally-poetic painting cycles and graphic maps while taking part in international painting colonies, on cultural and public manifestations, and who also had around thirty solo and many group exhibitions in Croatia and around the world. She also does illustrations, photography, and making documentaries while travelling, out of which the Croatian television HRT in 2007 showed the First Croatian Women’s Alpine Expedition (where she is a member) to Cho Oyu, one of Himalaya’s peaks (8201 m). She has devoted herself to painting, but also giving the art therapy - group projects, work with children and adults (mandala).

An important exhibition for her artistic career is the photograph exhibition Prayer for Peace, which was set in Split in 2001 and in Rijeka as an accompaniment to the project of Dalai Lama’s visit to Croatia, as well as the following painting cycles: Earth Day, Trees Give Birth to Forests, The Gentle Embrace of Ice, Winds Whisper Truths, Mandala – a Painted Prayer, The Sharon Flower" – video, musical and paintings happening in the oldest gallery in the world, Dioklecian's Pallace in Split, Croatia…

, Namaste, Oh Mother Earth, The Insides of the Universe, Travel Horizons and In Quest for a Painting from Within.

She is a member of The Croatian Association of Artists, the International Association of Art A.I.A.P UNESCO. She is currently doing her post diploma studies, the interdisciplinary study leading to a PhD at the University of Philosophy in Ljubljana, Department of Developmental Psychology: Archetypes in the Child’s First Drawing -Intercultural Comparisons.