Fanny Sanín: Geometric Equations

Americas Society presents the first solo career-survey of the Colombian artist Fanny Sanín in New York, starting June 4.

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 300 group and 43 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 presentation of Sanín’s paintings in New York—where she has lived and worked for 53 years.

Designed by artist Carlos Motta, the exhibition will feature several free-form abstract compositions demonstrating the strength of the artist’s early work before moving into her characteristic geometry-based production. Twenty major paintings and two dozen smaller studies will be installed in loosely chronological order to guide visitors through the subtle changes in Sanín’s use of color and form to explore geometry’s possibilities. An ample selection of preparatory sketches will speak to the painter’s meticulous process. Viewers will see how Sanín begins to create her large-scale acrylic paintings after doing many pencil sketches, drawings, collages, and watercolors to refine the juxtapositions in each composition. A video of a studio visit with Sanín and filmed statements from critics, art historians, and collectors will address how her work suggests concrete (i.e., Mesoamerican architecture) and oneiric (i.e., a sense of vibration) structures, without directly referencing observed places or things.

To accompany the show, we will present a series of public programs and publish a catalogue.

The exhibition will be on view June 4 to July 26. View gallery and visitors information here.

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Fanny Sanín (b. 1938, Bogotá, Colombia) began studying fine art at the University of the Andes in Bogotá. She later pursued her graduate studies at the University of Illinois and the Chelsea School of Art in London before moving to Monterrey, Mexico, where she had her first exhibition in 1964. Like other early works, the paintings on display evinced her interest in Abstract Expressionism and responded to the embrace by artists globally of the work of the New York School. By the time that she relocated permanently to Manhattan in 1971, however, Sanín had already begun advancing her own mode of depicting complex hard-edged geometric forms with interweaving lines and complementary or conflicting colors. Her works in this vein position her as a key figure within several generations of pioneering Latin American women abstractionists including Rosa Acle, Elsa Andrada, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Carmen Herrera, and Olga de Amaral. At the same time, her art has long been in conversation with that of American contemporaries like Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Leon Polk Smith, Agnes Martin, and Alma Thomas.