María Alejandra Menduiña Schneider
(Buenos Aires, Argentina · Based in Los Angeles since 2014)
María Alejandra Menduiña Schneider began studying charcoal and pastel drawing at the age of 14 and participated in her first group exhibition at 15. However, it wasn’t until she was 27 that she formally began her training at the Carlos Morel School of Fine Arts in Quilmes.
Coming from a family of artists, her father, a renowned Argentine musician and piano accordionist, surrounded her with creativity, sensitivity, and music, influences that deeply shaped her artistic vision.
As a young mother, she continued her studies while raising her two son, discovering in drawing and the visual arts a personal language and a way of life. That creative legacy continues through her children: Juan Eliel, a skydiver and pilot, and Wally, a manga-style comic artist, each one expressing in their own way the impulse toward freedom and imagination.
She graduated with a degree in Visual Arts Education from EMBA in Quilmes and later continued her studies for a year in Stage Design at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
Between 2000 and 2014, she combined her artistic practice with teaching and cultural management. She directed her own studio, where she developed projects that fostered creative and artistic exchange across four continents.
In her personal work, Menduiña first explored surrealism under the guidance of her mentor and friend Roberto Gatti, later evolving toward a poetic hyperrealism inspired by rural imagery and the memories of her childhood.
In 2014, she moved to Los Angeles, where she currently lives and works. Together with her husband (a writer and collector), she founded the Menduina Schneider Gallery, a space dedicated to contemporary Latin American art alongside their private collection of masterworks. The gallery remained active for ten years and hosted more than a hundred exhibitions.
After its closure, María Alejandra fully returned to her own artistic path, focusing on graphite and charcoal drawing as a means of introspection and permanence. Returning to her roots, she also integrated her studies in transpersonal therapy, a discipline in which she recently graduated.
Her works are part of several museums and institutions, including the Suhareka Museum (Kosovo), the Intiñan Museum and the Chimborazo Cultural Center (Ecuador). She participated in the MOLAA Gala 2023 (Museum of Latin American Art), and her drawings belong to private collections in various countries.
She actively collaborates with foundations such as Yuli’s Paradise (Guatemala) and CASA of Los Angeles, as well as supporting DT Women Center, Rainbow Services, and the Sheldrick Foundation in Kenya, contributing to social initiatives in support of women and children, and advocating for animal welfare associations.
She dedicates part of each day to her studio, where drawing continues to be her refuge, her practice of presence and her way of listening to what has not yet been seen.
Each drawing becomes a bridge between the visible and the invisible, a silent act of listening to that which has always been there, patiently waiting to be revealed.