On the occasion of the newest exhibition of Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’ exhibition, Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, curator of Collezione Ramo interviews Magdalena Suarez Frimkess about her drawings:

What is your relation with drawing? Can we talk of a daily practice? When was your first exhibition of drawings?

I started drawing when I was seven years old. I was in school and the nuns found out that I have facility to draw. So, that was then, when I was a girl in Venezuela, I started taking classes for drawing, you know, still life and the landscape. And then I got married, went to Chile and I found a good teacher who came from Yale University. I don’t know if you heard of Josef Albers. So, he was a great teacher for me too, he even taught color theory.

So, I guess I tried to draw all my life when I could, but I was raising kids. I married in Chile. So, I was busy being a mother, but in between I could sneak in drawing when I could. I guess I was born to do that. That’s what I can say. And then I came here with a scholarship and then, well my soap opera, my life got broken there. So, I came to the United States and married Michael [Frimkess]. And Michael is an artist too. I didn’t know anything about ceramics until Michael, but the drawing came first.

Then Michael would make the ceramics and I would draw on them. But drawing, it’s faster. The ceramic is a slow process. So, sometimes I can do the ideas faster with the pencil. So, that’s the only reason. I have an idea and I right away draw it.

Have you ever considered Italian art of last century as inspirational of your work?

Well, I know that one of my ancestors, one is a poet. He was named Portantini. I don’t know if it’s related, poetry with art. My family was wondering where I got the facility because they couldn’t find anybody in my family who was a painter or anything. So, they were puzzled about it. They discovered that my great-great-grandfather was Portantini. He was Italian.

Why did you choose this late drawing by Carla Accardi? Did you already know this artist?

I picked one but without even looking at it twice or anything, just picked it at random. Like how I pick which subjects to draw everyday, just at random, without paying too much attention.

Born in 1929 in Caracas, Venezuela, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess has lived and worked in Venice Beach, California since the 1960s. Her work has featured at MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House (2017); 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. In 2023, her work will be the subject of a career retrospective at LACMA, Los Angeles.

Drawings from this exhibition will be featured in a forthcoming Marni collection, continuing a previous collaboration that started in Spring/Summer 2018, with Suarez’ works underscoring men’s and women’s ready-to-wear.