Susana Amundaraín is a Venezuelan-born American artist. She has exhibited internationally in twenty-three solo shows, and numerous group exhibits. Amundaraín is represented in museums in South America and the USA, as well as in numerous private and corporate collections, such as PepsiCO and ALCOA.

Amundarain’s paintings develop as non-figurative expressions of the magical reality that underlies certain places and certain dynamics, at first encountered in the Amazon rain forests and plateaus of her home country, later in the poetical space of text and theater. She usually creates her imagery through multiple interplays of transparencies and eroded surfaces that evoke areas of contained energy or atmospheric fields. Her media includes acrylic and mixed media on canvas and paper, pictorial installations and scenic designs.

In 1992 Dr. Phyllis Tuchman writes a critical essay of her work based on twelve years of development. Here she observes: “Susana Amundaraín’s luminous, layered abstractions are beautiful and profound. With them this Venezuelan artist simultaneously addresses aesthetic as well as philosophical issues (…) Amundaraín has almost always made work that is non-representational. For her this is a commitment, not a fad. ”  

Her production works include Explosion de una Memoria (1994) a painting-installation at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas based on a play by Heiner Müller, with environmental sound by husband, Efraín Amaya. In 1999, she collaborates with her daughter, Vanessa Briceño (filmmaker), Efraín Amaya (composer) and Carol Ciavonne (co-writer of lyrics) to create Clepsydra, a multimedia operatic performance. This was premiered as part of Pittsburgh’s celebrations of the new millennium. She has also done set designs for plays staged by the “Grupo Theja” in Venezuela, including the world-premiered piece Autorretrato de Artista con Barba y Pumpa by José Ignacio Cabrujas under the direction of José Simón Escalona, and for André Koslowski with the Pennsylvania Dance Theatre.

Ms. Amundaraín holds a Master of Fine Arts degree, with emphasis in painting and performance art from the University of Denver in Colorado. She has also been a Visiting Scholar in Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, in NYU.