Acrylic No. 1, 1999

By Fanny Sanin

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. Presented in more than 300 group and 43 solo exhibitions, her work has prompted a variety of publications and scholarly essays, and is included in many leading public and private collections, such as the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Los Angeles County Art Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Colombia and the Museo de Arte Moderno de Mexico

Sanín was born in Bogotá, Colombia and earned a degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Andes. She continued her education with graduate studies at the University of Illinois and the Chelsea School of Art in London. During her early career she resided in Monterrey, Mexico and since 1971 she has lived and worked in New York, NY. In 2015 she received an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia.

The book Fanny Sanín: The Concrete Language of Color and Structure was published in 2019.

This publication, made possible by the Fanny Sanín Legacy Project, is a long-overdue comprehensive monograph on this pioneering painter. Featuring contributions from prominent academics and curators such as Beverly Adams, James Oles and Edward J. Sullivan, the book contextualizes Sanín’s work within international geometric abstraction and offers a glimpse into the artist’s rigorous working process. It surveys her entire career, from her energetic abstractions of the 1960s through the evolution and continual refinement of her ongoing commitment to concrete abstraction.