(b. 1929 in Caracas, Venezuela) lives and works in Venice, California. In the 1940s, she studied painting at Artes Plasticas, Caracas, Venezuela, moving in 1949 to study sculpture at the Catholic University in Santiago, Chile. In 1963, Suarez Frimkess was awarded a fellowship to study ceramics at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY, where she met her partner and long-time collaborator, Michael Frimkess. While their collaborative work has achieved acclaim, her first solo exhibition was not held until 2013, at 84 years-old. Since that debut, she has been undoubtedly known for her unique hand-painted ceramics, recognized for their unique flare in the candid capturing of pop culture iconography, ancient histories, mythologies and intimate memory.
She is currently the subject of the solo exhibition Magdalena Suarez Frimkess: Ninety-six and Pissed at the Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, and her work is currently featured in KAWS: Art & Comix at ALBERTINA Modern, Vienna. She was the subject of her career retrospective at LACMA (Los Angeles), and her work was featured in the exhibition Transmissions: Selections from the Marciano Collection . She was included in the recent El Museo del Barrio Triennial (New York), Flow States , which opened in October 2024. In September 2024, Suarez Frimkess opened a major two-floor solo exhibition at Kaufmann Repetto in New York. In recent years she has shown at White Columns, New York, Kaufmann Repetto in New York and Milan, and South Willard, Los Angeles. Her work was included in Made in L.A. , the Hammer Museum Biennial, Los Angeles (2014), as well as in group exhibitions at the Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles (2024), MAK Center, Schindler House, Los Angeles (2017), and Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco (2020).
Suarez Frimkess’ work is held in the collections of the Gardiner Museum, Toronto; ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, among others.
