Vivian Suter was born in 1949 in Buenos Aires to exiled European parents—her father owned a textile printing plant in Buenos Aires, while her mother,
Elisabeth Wild, was an artist. When she was 12, during the Peron regime, her family relocated to Basel, Switzerland, where she studied painting. In 1982, shortly after her first major group exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel, she visited Latin America, and the following year, she settled in Panajachel, Guatemala, near the Lake Atitlán. The local atmosphere, climate, vegetation, and animals became central themes in her work. Vivian Suter's works, painted on stretched manta and exhibited unstretched, remain untitled and undated. Traces of rain, mud, leaves and also the remnants left by her dogs—Bonzo, Tintin, Nina and Disco—footprints contribute to the organic and lively quality of the paintings. When exhibited, her paintings are often overlapping, suspended and moving with the wind, air currents or the movements of visitors.
Her most notable exhibitions include: Kunstmuseum Olten, 2004; Kunsthalle Basel, 2014; São Paulo Biennial, 2014; documenta 14, Kassel and Athens, 2017; Power Plant, Toronto, 2018; the Art Institute of Chicago, 2019; Camden Art Centre, London, 2020; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2021; Secession, Vienna, 2023. Vivian Suter's works are included in renowned collections like the Tate in London, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Kunstmuseum in Basel and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, among others.
