Irma Palacios was born in Iguala, Guerrero in 1943. From 1973 to 1979 she studied painting at La Esmeralda. In 1982 she obtained the First Prize in Painting at the Rufino Tamayo Biennial in the city of Oaxaca, three years later the Acquisition of Painting Prize in the National Hall of Plastic Arts of the Palace of Fine Arts. In 1986-1987 she was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Scholarship in New York.
Her first individual exhibition was held at La Casa del Lago in Mexico City in 1980. Subsequently, she presented countless individual exhibitions, among which the following stand out: The Signs of Silence, traveling exhibition through ten states of the Mexican Republic (1984 ); Mineral Mirage, Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City (1993); Mineral mirage, Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago de Chile (1994); Natures, Oaxaca Museum of Contemporary Art (1994); Open Earth, which was presented at the Libertad Gallery in Querétaro and which went to the Museum of Fine Arts of Aguascalientes, the Cabañas Cultural Institute, the Manuel Felguérez Museum of Abstract Art and the Yucatan Museum of Contemporary Art (2000-2001). In 2003, she exhibited On Paper at the House of the First Printing Press in America, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana de la Ciudad de México.
Irma has presented 5 individual exhibitions at the López Quiroga Gallery: Recent Work (1988), Natural History (1990), Other Geographies (1994), Changes in Skin (1997) and Write-Paint (2002).
Likewise, she has exhibited her work in various museums and international cultural spaces in the United States, Cuba, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Bulgaria, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, among others.