SUSANA ALDANONDO

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

Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) at the New York Academy of Art, the graduate art school founded by Andy Warhol in Tribeca, New York.  While there, she studied painting with Jose de Jesus Rodriguez, Melanie Vote, John Jacobsmeyer, Dik Liu, Steven Assael, and participated in workshops with Will Cotton.   In sculpture, studied with Nina Levy and Randy McIver.

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

She is a graduate of the Fine Arts Diploma Certificate at The Art Students League of New York where she studied painting and ceramics.  Her area of concentration was abstract painting.  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 MoMA and PS1MoMA respectively. The selection was announced on Linea Magazine.  She studied with Larry Poons, Ronnie Landfield, James Little and Yasumitsu Morito.

Aldanondo's work has been shown in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Steinberg Museum, the Susquehanna Museum, Queens College, 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 lines and color, she guides the eye through a rhythmic journey. She often paints to music leading to a composition that embodies music into the visual realm.  She successfully weaves and translates her unique vision onto her canvases through a compelling linear, often colorful dynamics that reveal a physicality of the most abstract of all art forms: music.

Her figurative work draws inspiration from ancient art, mythology, and her own imagination using a sophisticated color palette and symbolism.  Intrigued by the possibilities of the unseen she explores a spiritual world, mythology and gender roles throughout history.  Her work seeks to celebrate female empowerment.

Aldanondo is a courageous art professional challenging the norms and the stigma often associated with street artists as well as with women artists.  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, a discipline and approach that are traditionally not associated to women.

She challenges the art world and the public on ingrained ideas about women artists and particularly as it relates to abstract expressionism:  she takes this opportunity to educate the viewer.
She can often be found painting nonrepresentational work in the public spaces of New York City.  She refers to her place of work in public as her "street studio" or "her wall", perfectly situated near a renowned art organization where patrons often overlook her and her impressive large work.  She utilizes her experience to question how the art world assigns value to artists and their work.  How is it that what we see inside the walls of institutions and organizations is selected, and what is it that takes that value or attention away from a work of art based on its location.  Her creations in public space challenge everyone who walks by:  the writer, the critic, the passerby, the homeless, the art patron.

Her practice encompasses a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, and sculpture, though her main concentration is painting.  
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, in the process.   Here too, music plays a vital role.
Using her own story as the starting point, her work raises questions regarding societal expectations related to gender roles and visibility. 
In her own words: “my work is about being seen, but more importantly, it is about freedom of expression, freedom from the labels that are often applied onto us. It is about survival and the process of 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, displacement, and perhaps also, despair. "

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 and the Susan Wasserstein Patron of the Arts 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 trajectory 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.

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.

SPECIAL FEATURES 

CBS - The Equalizer, featuring three works, 2022, curated by - Hollywood Art Curator & Art Advisor.

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

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 Academy of Art

Merit Scholarship Award Winner in Abstract Painting - The Art Students League of New York

The Leonard Rosenfeld Award - 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.  Jurors:  Mitra Abbaspour PhD., MoMA,  James Lee  PS1MoMA for said scholarship.  CLICK HERE to view selection, announced on Linea Magazine.

James Little Student Exhibition - Honorable Mention 

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, RiseArt - 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 - Competition Winner. Juried by The Milken Family Foundation, The Newport Contemporary Art Museum and the Colby College Museum.