After graduating from the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela with a degree in philosophy and literature, Ángela de la Cruz moved to London, where she has resided since the end of the 1980s. She continued her studies at the Chelsea College of Art, Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Fine Art. Her initial paintings were monochromes in line with the Minimalist work of Barnett Newman (1905–1970) and Donald Judd (1928–1994). Nevertheless, in the 1990s she began to explore the limits of the medium and the nature of paintings as objects, an approach that has characterised her practice ever since.
One of her first object-paintings was Homeless (1996), where she broke free of the stretcher, thus expanding painting beyond its two-dimensional surface. By freeing the canvas from the wall and placing it on the floor, she prioritised its objective, material and spatial qualities. This painting is part of the series Everyday Paintings (1995–1999) in which the canvases were torn up, taken apart and stretched out. She used these mutilations to interrogate the magnificence the critic Clement Greenberg attributed to the medium and rupture with his brand of modernism, producing works that are more fragile, human and contingent.
The anthropomorphic nature of her work is also evident in the often rather literal titles she uses, simultaneously melodramatic and funny. For instance, in Loose Fit (2000–2008) the painting’s skin seems to be hanging off. There is a similar effect in Transfer (2012), an installation made with furniture and geometric versions, done in multiple versions. Here she references the evolution of her own body as a result of a stroke.

Since the turn of the century Á. de la Cruz has used recycled materials to question the concepts of accumulation and excess. For example, Clutter with Blanket (2004) and Clutter Wardrobes (2004) feature broken-down and reassembled canvases, stretchers and household furnishings. In these pieces, as in her work in general, the treatment of materials imparts a sense of calmness and at the same time of violence that come together to infuse the viewer with intense and almost visceral emotions.

The year 1998 marked a turning point in her career with the attention attracted by Larger than Life, a site-specific installation made for the Royal Festival Hall in London. Since then her reputation has risen constantly. She was short-listed for the 2010 Turner prize thanks to her exhibition After at the Camden Arts Centre in London (2010), and won the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas de España in 2017. Her work has been acquired by the London Tate, Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago de Compostela.