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Exhibitions

Fanny Sanín: A Chromatic Journey, 1966-2006

Frederico Sève Gallery / Latincollector, New York
May 1 – June 14, 2008

Frederico Seve/Latincollector Gallery is pleased to announce a retrospective exhibition of paintings by Fanny Sanín. A Chromatic Journey, 1966 – 2006 presents Sanín’s exploration undertaken with color as the thread that links the various phases of her work. This small survey enables viewers to embark on a visual voyage through forty years of creation that generate an interesting discussion of the painter’s artistic development.

Sanín’s trajectory can be seen, in a way, as the history of her personal treatment of color. Speaking of her works Edward Sullivan wrote, “in Sanín’s work the most unexpected colors coexist in a state of harmony that would be unimaginable in the art of a more conventional personality.” Oil No. 8, 1966, a masterpiece of painterly abstraction already anticipates Sanín’s penchant for color that was to become her trademark. The work’s conglomeration of fluid forms in hundreds of hues ranging from a core of soft blue aiming for proximity to a brilliant red, displays a freedom that by 1968 was to undergo a transformation when she took a step toward hard edge works. By the mid seventies the dominance of order and Sanín’s perfectionist tendency toward beauty becomes apparent in works like Acrylic No. 4, 1977, Acrylic No. 3, 1993 and Acrylic No. 1, 1994. Sanín’s dexterity and keen intuition for chromatic combinations demonstrates an unparalleled continuity that never repeats itself and remains as affecting as it was in the early stages of her career. However, in the last decade she has with increased momentum begun making works that are bursting with a new force. Intensely vivid canvases such Acrylic No. 2, 2005 display an increased exuberance and have become more daring in their juxtapositions.

Sanín’s Chromatic Journey has been a celebration of color, whose ecstatic cadences are illustrative of the Utopian spirit embedded in her work. Having worked outside of any group affiliation and eloping the sixties wave of figuration, Sanín has remained faithful to the principles of formalist abstraction yet her work eludes any strict categorization. Her oeuvre is the result of a personal questioning that negotiates between the legacy of Matisse’s and Kandinsky’s preoccupation with color, Mondrian’s neoplasticism and Russian Constructivism; it relates to modes of minimalism, color field and hard edge painting. However, Sanín’s explorations have taken their lessons and discovered a way to temper the severity of geometry with intuitive chromatic adjustments.

Fanny Sanín is one of Latin America’s most distinguished and well-respected abstract painters. Sanín studied at the University of the Andes in Colombia and pursued graduate studies at the University of Illinois and the Chelsea School of Art in London. Her work has been included in over 300 shows, and was included in the landmark exhibition Latin American Women Artists 1915-1995, which opened at the Milwaukee Art Museum and traveled throughout the United States. Most recently she had a retrospective at the Instituto Italo-Latino Americano in Rome and was awarded an Honorable Mention by the National Arts Club, New York.