Susana Aldanondo

Aldanondo is known for regularly painting large non-representational works in the public spaces of New York City

She does not sell her work in the streets, she only paints her work there

About

Susana Aldanondo (b. 1976) is an Argentine-American artist.

Currently completing a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) at the New York Academy of Art, the graduate art school founded by Andy Warhol in the heart of Tribeca, New York. She also completed an Artist Residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as part of her MFA.

She is a graduate of the Fine Arts Diploma Certificate at The Art Students League of New York

While there, Aldanondo studied with renowned abstract art masters Larry Poons, Ronnie Landfield, and others, focusing on color, abstract design ideas, painting and sketching from live models, also exploring other mediums such as ceramics with Yasumitsu Morito. She also gained inspiration and guidance into abstract expressionist sculpture ideas by Frank Stella, whom Aldanondo admires and met years ago.

After meeting fellow artist and friend Ron Davis in a class, she was inspired to explore geometrical abstraction, and received guidance from Davis on color and technique during that time. According to Davis, Susana ‘is the real deal, she successfully addresses pictorial issues mastering color and space throughout the plane. Susana is also a kind artist who shares a sense of camaraderie with me and my wife.” - Ron Davis

Aldanondo’s approach is unconventional, she tackles the complexities of the dominant narratives, becoming an active statement as she creates art in the public spaces of New York City.
Aldanondo’s work takes you 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 lines and color, she guides the eye through a rhythmic journey. She often paints to music, evoking the harmonious interplay of spontaneous lines and color, leading to a composition that connects music into the visual realm.  Music as the most abstract of art forms, though she successfully weaves and translates her unique vision onto her canvases through a compelling linear, often colorful dynamics.

She is a courageous art professional challenging the norms, and the stigma often associated with street artists, an advocate for those who are powerless or thought of as ‘less than’ she takes this opportunity to educate the viewer.
She reminds us that fine art can and must be made in any place where the artist feels a connection, believing in the process without incorporating what’s expected. She finds inspiration in making her creations at the places she loves and where she feels welcomed. Her search led her to find that place in the public spaces of SoHo, New York, where she can often be found painting nonrepresentational work in public.

Her practice encompasses a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, and ceramics. 
She is known for addressing issues of marginalization and exclusion, and taking on an important social role through her artistic voice.

She believes this is at the center of most art forms. Her background in International Relations and deep appreciation of overlooked populations informs some of her figurative work. Her own experience while living in Vermont, where she faced injustice under the powers of authority given to locals, ignorant people working to harass and oppress her and others in her network ignited a need for her to use her voice through her own experience.

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 process shifts the narrative away from dominant stories while creating new spaces to celebrate the beauty of every day life, creating a new vision of fate, notions of home and belonging, women’s rights, empowerment and liberation in the process.   Here too, music plays a vital role.
Using her own story as the starting point, her work raises questions regarding identity, migration, belonging, and visibility within society.

In her own words: “my work is about being seen, but more importantly, it is about a process of liberation and empowerment through expression. Pointing to finding a way out from the labels that are often applied onto us. It is all about survival, overcoming fate that is imposed on us individually or collectively, it is about belonging, and finding our way back to our own selves in the midst of nostalgia, memory, displacement, and often also, despair. My work is about attaining unique forms of expression and going for it. This is the concept embedded in my work in public spaces.”

Aldanondo’s work pushes the limits of what’s expected and judged inviting the viewer to reconsider their engrained views of the world around them and consider new, unexplored possibilities.

She's also intrigued by the possibilities of the unseen, through imagination and the spiritual world.
Through her education she has come to the realization that art must hold a degree of intellectual meaning to inform its intention visually.

She won a Merit Scholarship in Abstract Painting offered by The Art Students League and was the winner of the Leonard Rosenfeld Award. She was selected by curators of The Museum of Modern Art in NYC (MoMA) and PS1MoMA Mitra Abbaspour PhD., and James Lee for said scholarship. CLICK HERE to view selection announced on Linea Magazine.

Upon acceptance into the New York Academy of Art's Masters of Fine Arts, she was awarded the Academy Scholar Award by The New York Academy of Art toward the MFA degree and the Susan Wasserstein Patrons Scholar Award.

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 Postbaccalaureate Fellow in Museum Practice, Colby College Museum.
Her art career has been reviewed by 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.

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.

She has also painted live at a Flushing Business Gala at the Sheraton Hotel, in New York, donating her work to support the Flushing BID.

She paints in the public space of SoHo, New York on a wall she refers to as ‘my wall’, where she confronts the public with the juxtaposition of fine art and street art as one.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Steelcase - Selected to represent the essence of NYC artists, commissioned to create a piece for the corporate headquarters, overlooking Central Park, New York.

CBS - The Equalizer, featuring three works, 2022, curated by a renowned -Hollywood Art Curator & Art Advisor, Fanny Preire.
Four Seasons Hotel & Residencies, Downtown, New York Park Terrace Hotel, Bryant Park, New York

Park Terrace Hotel, Bryant Park, New York

SAMSUNG USA - Finalist, featured on Samsung USA, 2019.

RESIDENCIES & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, New York, NY
The Ruth & Harold D. Center for Education and Select Galleries
Artist in residence. Consisted of research on selected European and American masters, culminating with joining the copyist program where Aldanondo produced two pieces painted at Gallery 803 in the European wing, inspired by Camille Corot’s “Sybille” (1870). Click hete The ‘unfinished’ nature of the piece appealed to Aldanondo, as well as Corot’s shift to portraiture although he was a renowned landscape painter. Drawn to the rough brushstrokes particularly of the model’s arm and hands, she painted the full portrait and then went on to produce a close up of the hand holding ‘the pink.’

SVA - School of Visual Arts, NYC - Artist Residency, Chelsea, New York

ICELAND - Artist Residency program was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of Iceland. Eyrarbakki, Iceland. Susana was selected to join a group of fellow international artists who came together to explore the sense of time and identity, empathy and compassion. While there, Susana worked closely with the local town, school and with Litla-Hraun the largest prison in Iceland, to help create an art festival bringing together everyone in the community, based on the concepts of empathy and compassion, while learning about social interaction, Icelandic festivities & identity, and the social, justice, and welfare system.

She led a painting workshop for 40-50 inmates. She also led a workshop sharing her experience as an abstract expressionist artist at the local school. She led the art workshop during the art festival at the local prison.

City As Studio - self imposed artist residency/project in New York City (2018 to present)

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Academy Scholar Scholarship by The New York Academy of Art toward the MFA degree
Susan Wasserstein Patron of the Arts Scholar Award
New York Foundation for the Arts Grant through the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation - Emergency Grant
Merit Scholarship Award Winner in Abstract Painting - The Art Students League of New York
The Leonard Rosenfeld Award in Abstract Painting- through the generosity of the Leonard Rosenfeld Fund and Leonard Rosenfeld’s wife, through The Art Students League of New York selected by jurors of The Museum of Modern Art in NYC (MoMA) for said scholarship.
Abstract Painting Student Exhibition - Blue Dot Winner
Larry Poons Student Exhibition - Red Dot winner * by professors & peers.
Hamptons Fine Art Fair Chief Curator’s Best In Booth Award
Hamptons Fine Art Fair Chief Curator’s Picks Award
Best in Show - London, UK
National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) Abstract Painting Juried Award Winner
Jackson’s Painting Prize (London, UK) Long-listed
Samsung USA - Featured artist
ArtScope Magazine - Winner.

Juried selection by The Milken Family Foundation: Milken Family Foundation Juried selection juried by Benedict Leca, PH.D., Executive Director, Redwood Library & Athenaeum, Norah Diedrich, Executive Director, Newport Art Museum, Qianni Zhu, Mirlen Family Postbaccalaureate Fellow in Museum Practice, Colby
College Museum


COLLECTIONS

In 2024 her work was acquired by an important collection in Asia

Permanent Collection at The Art Students League of New York, curated by Ksenia Nouril, PhD. and former curator at MoMA, NYC.
Permanent Collection at the Consulate of Argentina in New York.

Sharon Jacobs & Patrick McMullan Collection
Steelcase - New York City Headquarters
Balliro Family Collection at Hamptons, NY
Iris Apfel, New York, NY
Southern Vermont Medical Center, Vermont

Her work has been acquired by collectors in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, SoHo, East Hamptons, Paris (France), London (UK), Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Iceland.

MEMBERSHIPS

THE ART STUDENTS LEAGUE OF NEW YORK

ARTISTS OF RONNIE LANDFIELD
Select group of artists who are current and/or former students of Ronnie Landfield.


SPEAKING PRESENTATIONS

Iceland - Presented the project she worked on while in Eyrarbakki, presenting the Art Exhibition which consisted of paintings on paper made by the inmates at the local prison and also by the school children at the local school. Through the power of art, these very different groups of creators came together. The works presented shed light on the many similarities in inspiration found in the works, which spoke of hopes, dreams for the future, a love for family and love of the arts. The exhibition was presented to the public at the local community center.

EDUCATION

MFA - New York Academy of Art, Tribeca, New York

Fine Arts Diploma in Painting - The Art Students League of New York - Fine Arts Diploma (2019-2023) Studied with renowned art masters

Parsons School of Design - Graphic Design & Marketing (Certificate courses) New York, New York MoMA NYC - History of Abstract Art & Art and Identity in Society, studied with Lisa Mazzola.

Nord University, Norway- BA - International Relations with a focus on Indigenous People's Studies and nations of the High North

Cornell University - (Certificate): Urban Ecology & Climate Change Certificates.

Hunter College - New York, New York, Communications & Art History, Translation & Interpretation

HISTORICAL ARCHIVES

Metropolitan Museum of Art - Library Archives in lieu of Artist Residency (forthcoming 2024)

THE ART STUDENTS LEAGUE OF NEW YORK - PERMANENT COLLECTION ARCHIVES & EXHIBITION ARCHIVES

TALLER BORICUA ARCHIVES - EAST HARLEM, NEW YORK

Painting Music: painting to live tango by renowned Grammy nominated musician Pablo Aslan and AvanTango.
Lower East Side, NYC.