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Since the 1970s, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess has been creating hand-painted, rather than dipped, glazed ceramics which feature content varying from mythological motifs to pop characters and advertisements, from both history and memory. Utilizing sculptural forms, Suarez Frimkess's works share her personal story as well as her unparalleled representations of the socio-political times through which her career has endured.
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Her celebrated ceramic works are a unique reflection and interpretation not only of the artist’s own uncommon story but also of the social and political times through which her career has prevailed. Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’ works have been considered unconventional in her school of ceramics given their often sculptural as opposed functional forms. She selects her subject matter from her day’s activities and encounters, which she likens to selecting a dish from a menu. Her hand-painted, rather than dipped, glazed works depict varied imaginative characters and scenes selected from history and from memory, the imagery and language of which originated in areas around the world. While one vessel may portray pre-Columbian motifs, another is as likely to assume the form of Minnie Mouse donning a Prada bag or the bust of Nefertiti. It is this diversity combined with the artist’s playful poetics and humble hand that make Magdalena’s stories feel so ineffably our own.
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"At times amusing juxtapositions [have] emerged. She adopted a Hispano Moresque form of composition on some plates and bowls (even working in a similar pallet of color) but drawing Mayan motifs and figures. However here there was no irony intended or deliberate incursions into contrasting cultures. Suarez achieved these interesting mixes mainly by accident. “I only care what my work looks like, whether it works compositionally, whether the color is right,” she states, “I am indifferent to what it means.”The style is distinctive. The surfaces are drawn with a busy tracery of line. And yet while the compositions are frequently crowded, there is great economy in her work. A figure, a tree or patch of flowers is suggested by few, deft lines. Color is used with freedom and with Latin flair. But what is most remarkable about the work is the ease with with Suarez deals with a three dimensional pallette.”**except from “Michael and Magdalena Frimkess: A Retrospective View, 1956-1981” by Garth Clark
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Magdalena Suarez Frimkess (b. 1929 in Caracas, Venezuela) lives and works in Venice, California, and will be the subject of retrospective exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), in 2022.Although Suarez Frimkess's artworks in collaboration with her partner and life-long collaborator Michael Frimkess achieved acclaim, her first solo exhibition was not until 2013, at 84 years-old. Her work has featured at White Columns, New York (2014), and in the 2014 Hammer Museum Biennial, "Made in Los Angeles". Suarez Frimkess' work is held in the collections of the Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, among others.
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*All quotations from an interview with Magdalena Suarez Frimkess on April 29, 2020.
a conversation with Magdalena Suarez Frimkess
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