Exhibitions

Fanny Sanín, a career that has made rigor a form of abstraction

bonart bogotà - 30/09/26

After more than six decades dedicated to art, Fanny Sanín has received the ARTBO Lifetime Achievement Award, a recognition of a career fundamental to understanding the development of geometric abstraction in Colombia and the Latin American context. The Bogotá-born artist thus becomes the second artist to be honored with this award by the fair, after Beatriz González.

As part of the tribute, ARTBO presents "Dazzling Gradually ," a selection of works that offers insight into some of the principles that have shaped Sanín's career: the relationship between form and color, structure, symmetry, balance, and the construction of pictorial space. The exhibition, supported and managed by the Alonso Garcés Gallery, explores a practice in which each element seems to respond to a precise logic, yet this precision never diminishes painting's capacity to transform perception.

In Sanín's works, color functions not merely as a chromatic element, but as a structural component capable of modifying the relationships between the different parts of the composition. The carefully arranged forms establish tensions and balances that guide the viewer's eye gradually across the picture plane. Hence the sense of wonder that doesn't occur immediately, but rather emerges progressively as the viewer discovers the internal relationships within each composition.

During the tribute, the artist wanted to share the recognition with those who have accompanied her throughout her career and dedicated a few words to family, curators, friends, and colleagues. She also emphasized the role that Colombia continues to play in her career, even though she has lived outside the country for decades.

Sanín was born in Bogotá in 1938 and moved to New York in 1971, the city where she has developed much of her artistic career. Her training began at the University of the Andes, where she studied between 1956 and 1960, before continuing her studies abroad. That initial period, as the artist herself explains, was fundamental in laying the groundwork for an evolution that would later lead her toward abstraction.

"My studies at the University of Los Andes were vital," Sanín recalls. "It was a very academic initial stage, but important and necessary to arrive years later at the introduction of abstract art." This training was complemented by contact with the work of some of the artists who were transforming the Colombian art scene. Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, Edgar Negret, Omar Rayo, and Guillermo Wiedemann, among others, were key figures in a context that the artist remembers as decisive.

His works represented, at that time, a profound transformation of the Colombian and Latin American art scene. Sanín developed his own language from geometric abstraction, built around formal precision, color, symmetry, balance, and harmony. This decades-long investigation has led to solo and group exhibitions of his paintings in Colombia and in various countries, including the United States, Mexico, France, and the United Kingdom.

But the geographical distance from Colombia hasn't meant a break with the country. "Colombia has always been present. I've never severed my ties with Colombia," the artist affirms. Since arriving in New York, she has maintained connections with the Colombian art scene and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. This connection is also maintained through her friendships and by keeping abreast of current events in the country.