Susana Aldanondo

Susana Aldanondo’s Education & Inspiration

Abstract Expressionist artist Susana Aldanondo is an Argentine-American post-war contemporary artist who lives and works in New York City.

Aldanondo completed an Artist Residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, guided research of art masters concluding with joining the copyist program.

She is a graduate of the Fine Arts Degree at The Art Students League of New York where she studied painting and ceramics. While there, she was a recipient of a Merit Scholarship and winner of the Leonard Rosenfeld Award in Abstract Painting, selected by curators Mitra Abbaspour PhD., and James Lee of the MoMAand PS1MoMA respectively. She studied with Larry Poons, Ronnie Landfield, Pat Lipsky, Yasumitsu Morito. She was introduced to geometrical abstraction through Ron Davis, a fellow artist who studied with her, which led her to study with James Little and received guidance from Ron Davis. Attended lectures and seminars by Knox Martin and Frank Stella.

While at the New York Academy of Art she studied with Clifford Owens, Jose de Jesus Rodriguez, Nina Levy and others, and took workshops with Will Cotton.

Aldanondo's work is in important collections such as the Marie Theresa "Bebe" Lammoglia Virata Family Collection in Asia, and the The Virata Family Collection in Manila and New York. The Virata Family generously gifted two pieces to the First Lady of the Philippines Liza Marcos. Aldanondo's work is in the Permanent Collection at The Art Students League of New York, the Permanent Collection at the Consulate of Argentina in New York, the Embassy of Argentina in Manila, Philippines, the Leonard Rosenfeld-Hoffmann Collection, was acquired by Iris Apfel, acquired by Philanthropist Sharon Jacob in New York, and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation in New York where she was also a contributing artist. Her work was featured at the Four Seasons Hotel and Residencies Downtown, New York. Her work joined the collection of the First Lady of the Philippines Liza Marcos, a gift by the Virata Family.

Her work has been critiqued by important independent art professionals such as Elaine Kwok, Monika Fabjanska, Jane Dickson, Will Cotton, Clifford Owens, Tschabalala Self, Alexis Worth, among others.

Aldanondo's work has been shown in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Steinberg Museum, the Susquehanna Museum, Queens College, Taller Boricua, Kino Saito Art Center, New York Foundation for the Arts, Halsey McKay Gallery through the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Susan Eley Fine Art Gallery (Lower East Side) and others.

Aldanondo’s abstract work takes the viewer into a symphonic repertoire of visual expressions informed by the compositions of renowned music maestros, as well as contemporary music. In an energetic dance between line and color, she guides the eye through a rhythmic and geometric journey. She often paints to music leading to a composition that embodies music into the visual realm.

Her figurative work draws inspiration from ancient art, mythology, shaped primarily from her own imagination using an identifying color palette and symbolism. Intrigued by the possibilities of the unseen her work highlights a spiritual world, mythology throughout history. Her work seeks to celebrate female empowerment.

She questions the established notions of high art by taking her process to the street. She seeks to address issues of marginalization and exclusion taking on an important social role by actively creating work in the public space. She takes up space to create large abstract expressionist work in public.

She can often be found painting nonrepresentational work in the public spaces of New York City. She creates and exhibits her work in the public space as an active statement of rebellion, questioning the established notions of fine art while also shedding light on the difficult task of being a woman artist in a male dominated field.

Her practice encompasses a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, ceramics, performance, and sculpture. Aldanondo draws inspiration from her Latin-American roots’ of Buenos Aires’ ‘fileteado’ as a starting point for her gestural abstract paintings that reinterpret her own experience as an immigrant and new generation of Americans.

Her figurative work is informed by research and the embodiment of the occult, the spiritual, the imaginary, and the immigrant experience. It is rooted in simplicity of form while working with limited colors to build clear emotional stories, rather than realistic images .

Exhibitions & Recognition

She was awarded a Scholarship Grant by the Marie Theresa Lammoglia Virata Family Collection to attend graduate school. In past years she also won a juried competition, juried by the Milken Family Foundation: Milken Family Foundation Juried selection juried by Benedict Leca, PH.D., Executive Director at the Redwood Library & Athenaeum, Norah Diedrich, Executive Director at the Newport Art Museum, Qianni Zhu, Mirlen Family Post baccalaureate Fellow in Museum Practice, Colby College Museum.

Her trajectory has been reviewed by Art Daily News (Mexico and worldwide), Forbes Latin-America in Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador and Uruguay, Artland Magazine in Denmark, and by local NYC based contemporary art magazines such as Hyperallergic and WhiteHot Magazine, and in Europe by Artland Magazine, and Alpi Fashion Magazine in Rome, Italy, mentions Linea Magazine by The Art Students League of New York.

Her connection to music has led to collaborations with independent musicians of the Juilliard Music School in New York as well as scholars and composers of Columbia University. Other collaborations exploring sound and visual arts include the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, the Noa Fort Quartet in an exploration of improvised reactions to music and the visual art forms; Aldanondo painted to live to the music of the musicians and composers who also improvised their music inspired by Aldanondo’s painting; exploring the human experience related to sound in the present moment as part of an exhibition “Sound & Sight: A Duet” presented by The Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and curated by NAscentNY in a private event and exhibition in Brooklyn Heights, NY.

As part of another exhibition, she was invited to paint to tango by AvanTango and Grammy nominee Pablo Aslan at the Lower East Side, New York. She collaborated with New York City based tango orchestras such as Suarez-Paz Tango during their celebratory events of the centennial honoring renowned tango composer, Astor Piazzolla, and was a contributing artist during their Tango Gala Benefit at the Consulate of Argentina in New York. Occasionally, she collaborates with Central Park Tango, in Central Park, New York, where for the past few years she has painted, inspired by the music, the dancers, and the location, where she is drawn for the spontaneity, inclusion, and diversity abounds and that is welcomed, something she believes is representative of the culture of tango at its core.

You can find Susana sketching or painting there during the summer months.

Aldanondo is a former member of the historic New York Society of Women Artists, an organization recognized by the State of New York as a historical organization.

She's a current member of The Art Students League of New York.

Aldanondo can be found painting in the public space of SoHo, New York, where she paints on a wall where she has been painting for several years as performative and political active statement.