Susana Solano was born in Barcelona in 1946, the same city where she studies Fine Arts and makes contact with the art world through painting. Graduated in 1976, she began a brief pictorial journey that ended up taking her to sculpture in the early 1980s, a record that she will use in her work to this day. Her work is frequently linked to postminimalism, as well as to other Spanish sculptors like Juli González, Jorge Oteiza or Eduardo Chillida. Iron and wicker are common in her work, although she has also worked through industrial forging, always with a clear intention of exploring the relationship between space and artist.
Solano creates symbolic spaces in abstract forms, drawing inspiration from nature, the environment, and memory; and that induces us to observe them and take sides. Based on her own experiences, she raises questions about the human being and her relationship with her habitat. We find architectures like cavities, receptacles, deposits or hills that it explores the limits between visible and hidden. In this context, the concept of epidermis acquires a great meaning, since the covering is a fundamental part of the works, since it is presented as a container and exhibitor of a less visible nucleus, but of equal or greater significance.
About her exhibition career, it starts in 1980 at Espai 10 in Fundació Joan Miró with an individual exhibition. From that moment, her work spreads around Europe, in important places like Serpentine Gallery in London, CAPC-Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux or Documenta 8 in Kassel. Also, at the end of the eighties, she starts to exhibit in the United States through institutions like Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of Smithsonian Institution in Washington D. C. or Donald Young Gallery in Chicago. It highlights, among others, her retrospective presented in Palacio Velázquez of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid in 1992, later it itinerates to Grenoble, London and Malmö.
Currently, we can find Solano’s works in the world’s most prominent museums and collections, such as The Utsu-Kushi-Ga-Hara Open Air Museum of Tokyo, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam or MoMA in New York. Furthermore, she won prizes like Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas in 1988 or Premio Tomás Francisco Prieto of Real Casa de la Moneda in 2011, among others.
List of artworks
Ballarí , 1982
Ballarina , 1982
Pedrís , 1982
Pedrís , 1982
Colinas huecas / núm. 15 , 1985
La parella núm. 1 , 1988
Ballarí , 1982
Colinas huecas / núm. 15 , 1985
Ballarina , 1982
La parella núm. 1 , 1988
Pedrís , 1982
Press articles
1915 – 1995
Col·lecció Josep Suñol
Owing to the number of works in the collection, the first show included a selection of the most representative pieces dating from 1915 to...
1970 – 2001
Josep Suñol Collection
Conceptual art, minimal art and arte povera of extreme radicalism in its thinking, in dramatic contrast to attitudes since...
27 works, 18 artists
Josep Suñol Collection
27 pieces from the Josep Suñol Collection to help expand visitors’ knowledge of 20th-century...
Sculpture/Object
Josep Suñol Collection
36 pieces from the Josep Suñol Collection, ranging from the early avant-garde up to the most daring experiments of the...
Low Flight
Susana Solano
"Low Flight" alludes to the horizontal nature of the pieces laid out on display across the floor in the exhibition...
Portrait: 1971-1987
Fernando Vijande
We brought together 51 artists to talk about Fernando Vijande, the gallerist who supported the work of all those who exhibited at the Galería Vandrés and the Galería...
Everything Solid Fades Away
In Three Acts
The second act, titled Everything Solid Fades Away, is a journey through a group of works that allow us to understand the extent to which the abstract pulsation did...
Literarture
Fall 2017
This fall we take up Literarture, an activity focused in the relationship between art and...
Open days
December 2017 and January 2018
Visit for free the current exhibition at the Fundació Suñol Fernando Vijande. Portrait: 1971-1987 to say goodbye to 2017 and salute the new year...
Fernando Vijande. Portrait: 1971-1987
José Luis Alexanco and Daniel Giralt-Miracle
José Luis Alexanco —artist and coorganizer of the exhibition— and Daniel Giralt-Miracle —art critic and historian— will lead a tour visit of Fernando Vijande. Portrait: 1971-1987 on Monday, February...
Guided tours to Fernando Vijande. Portrait: 1971-1987
The Fundació Suñol organizes some commented tours for individual audience through the exhibition Fernando Vijande. Portrait:...
27 works, 18 artists
This exhibition puts together 27 pieces from the Suñol Soler Collection with the aim of expanding knowledge of 20th century...
Sculpture/Object
The exhibition Sculpture/Object was the first of various commemorative events for Fundació Suñol’s 5th anniversary, held in 2012. It showed 36 pieces from the...
