At his death in 1983, Eric Grate worked as an artist in artist sixty-five years, leaving one as extensive as multifaceted oeuvre. Eric Grate lived abroad for long periods and those years were not only his most productive, they also had a crucial role in all his later activities. Many of the topics he raised, he would later return to and develop further. Grate lived in Munich from 1922 to 1923, then in Italy and Greece and finally Paris, where he settled in 1924 and with the exception of a couple of long stays in Stockholm in 1929 where he remained until 1933/34.

With its unusually variable and susceptible mind Grate was enormously influenced by the creative atmosphere of Paris, he participated extensively in various exhibitions and spent time with Picasso, Max Ernst, Miro, Calder and many others.