Biography

Jacqueline Unanue is a Chilean-American artist of Spanish ancestry living and working in Philadelphia since 2000.

She studied design at the Universidad de Chile, Valparaíso, and received formal training in drawing, painting, art history and textile art. While a student, she became interested in the rock art found in Chile where she met world-renowned archaeologist, Hans Niemeyer, who soon became her mentor.

Unanue traveled extensively through Chile’s Atacama Desert, doing on-site research in the mountains and cliff areas that contain rock art. She also traveled to Spain to study the pre-historic paintings of the Altamira caves in the Basque Country, the home of her paternal ancestors.

Since 1983 she has been exhibited in Chile, Spain, Finland, Ecuador, Argentina, and the United States—in galleries in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. She exhibited in Barcelona, Spain during 2013, and 2015. Her work resides in many private and public collections in the Americas and Europe.

In 2015, she received the Latin American Women in Art and Cultural Tribute recognition in New York.

Since her arrival in the United States in 2000, her artistic vision has mainly been expressed through acrylic painting on canvas. Her recent works originated from her method of spontaneous or gestalt “calligraphic” painting that hints at a universal code.

She is represented by Muse Gallery, Philadelphia.