Fanny Sanín: Geometric Equations Pocket Book

This fully illustrated publication accompanies the Americas Society exhibition Fanny Sanín: Geometric Equations.

Curated by Dr. Edward J. Sullivan, the exhibition will survey the Colombian-born, New York-based painter’s accomplishments in monumental acrylic painting, smaller compositions, and pencil studies to reinforce Sanín’s position as an indispensable figure within the development of abstract art in both Latin America and the United States.

Dedicated primarily to geometric abstraction, Fanny Sanín’s prolific career spans five decades. Her paintings, drawings, and prints have been exhibited widely throughout Latin America, the United States, and Europe. Although her work has been shown widely in more than three hundred group and fifty-five solo exhibitions, has prompted a variety of publications and scholarly essays, and is included in numerous leading public and private collections, this exhibition will be the first institutional survey presentation of Sanín’s paintings in New York—where she has lived and worked for fifty-four years.

Designed by artist Carlos Motta, the exhibition features several free-form abstract compositions demonstrating the strength of the artist’s early work before moving into her characteristic geometry-based production.

Fanny Sanín's more than six-decade professional career—from her native Bogotá to Urbana, Illinois; Monterrey, México; London; and New York—demonstrates the continuous development from the initial expressionistic art to her geometric works. Major museums collect her work, such as, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Museos de Arte Moderno of México, of Bogotá and of Medellín, Museo Nacional and Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia in Bogotá, University of California at Berkeley, Oberlin College, and Wellesley College. The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU featured her work. Recently, paintings entered the collections of the Tate Modern and the Museo Reina Sofía. Key recent exhibitions include the inaugural exhibition of the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center, the Achi Art Triennial, and the landmark exhibition in England, France, and Germany, Action-Gesture-Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70. She was invited to the main section of the 2024 Venice Art Biennale. The 2019 monograph Fanny Sanín: The Concrete Language of Color and Structure presents a comprehensive review of her oeuvre. Galleries that represent her include Sicardi Ayers Bacino, Houston; Durban Segnini, Miami; Goya Contemporary, Baltimore; and Alonso Garcés, Bogotá. Her Legacy Project, led by prominent scholars, is committed to the placement of works in major museums and collections and later will continue as a trust responsible for the legacy of Fanny Sanín’s art.

Read the full pocketbook.

Table of contents 

• Foreword by Susan Segal 
• “Equations of Place” by Aimé Iglesias Lukin 
• “An Alternate Form of Vision: Fanny Sanín in New York” by Edward J. Sullivan 
• “Fanny Sanín and the Pursuit of Spiritual Harmony” by Ana María Reyes 
• Works 
• Biographies 
• Credits 
• Acknowledgments

See all Americas Society publications. 

Price: $5. To purchase this catalog, please contact: art@as-coa.org or order on Amazon.

The exhibition is curated by Edward J. Sullivan with exhibition design by Carlos Motta.

Visual Arts exhibition series editors: Aimé Iglesias Lukin and Karen Marta

Associate editor: Tatiana Marcel