Vivian Suter

Vivian Suter was born in Buenos Aires in 1949. She has painted in Basel, Vienna, Africa, Bern, Rome and Panajachel and has lived in Panajachel, Guatemala since 1982.

Panajachel

Traveling through North and Central America in 1982, Vivian Suter arrived in Panajachel – a village on the shores of Lake Atitlán – and stayed there, making her home on a plot of land on a former coffee plantation. Since the early 1980s, most of her artwork has been created from this setting, and many of her works have become part of it.

The gravileas, along with avocado and mango trees, which were originally planted to protect the coffee plantations, provide the area with shade throughout the year. A steep path, where the steps mix with the mountain sidewalk, leads to Vivian Suter’s studio, from which the town of Panajachel with its lake and volcanoes can be seen over the tops of the trees.

The art born here is about the wind, the volcanoes and the vastness and clarity of this tropical landscape.

Under the shade of the coffee plantation, a second studio is located. The view between the gables reaches only the leaves of the dense banana plants growing in front of the house.

Vivian Suter’s images and the photographic works and sketches she creates along with them are representations, commentaries and interpretations of her surroundings, both external and internal. They are also appropriations, they make this environment their own and, in the same way, are appropriated by their surroundings.

In Vivian Suter’s changing life there has been one constant: her art. No matter where she is, there will always be a place where she creates new works and surrounds herself with pieces she has made so far.

Agatha

Storms threaten and hit Guatemala more and more frequently, and in early June 2010, one such storm caused enormous damage in Panajachel. Both Vivian Suter’s studios and stored paintings were affected, resulting in a return of many of her works to the same nature that inspired them.