Fanny Sanín’s Acrylic No. 6, 1979 is a perfect example of the artist’s signature style. Symmetry and balance are the main characteristics of this piece as is common in her entire oeuvre. The painting consists of a complex arrangement of vertical and horizontal bands of solid color. Two gray, thin vertical bands divide it in three large areas. The side areas mirror each other exactly: they have small bands of color in the top and bottom, and larger bands in the middle. This is reflected in the central area where the middle part is a large band of dull purple, and the top and bottom contain smaller units. The top center has a more complex structure with a cross-like configuration in a deep red. The artist uses a subdued color palette mostly in cool hues of gray, purple, and lilac with a few areas of pale rose and yellow and the center-top bands in red. An important aspect of Sanin’s use of color is the fact that she always mixes her own tones. The use of geometric shapes in bands of solid color brings Sanin’s work close to the art of American artists associated with hard-edge abstraction such as Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, and Kenneth Noland. At the same time, the painting belongs to the tradition of geometric abstraction in Colombia. In line with Colombian artists such as Edgar Negret and Eduardo Ramírez-Villamizar, Sanín conceives her entire work as a means to express a spiritual content and to produce a mystical experience through symmetrical and balanced compositions. Sanín’s Acrylic No. 6, 1979 thus partakes of a transnational dialogue that is in fact characteristic of all her work.
Born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1935, Fanny Sanín’s name has become synonymous with abstract art. From her early days as an artist in the 1960s until today, she has professed an unwavering commitment to this style. Sanín studied Fine Arts at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá from 1956 to 1960. Thanks to her university professors David Manzur, Armando Villegas, and especially Juan Antonio Roda, she adopted the language of gestural abstraction, with which she debuted at the Colombian National Salons of 1962 and 1963. In this latter year she moved to Monterrey, Mexico, where she established close contacts with a group of artists working in the same mode, in particular the Mexican Lilia Carrillo. Between 1966 and 1968, Sanín studied in London at the Chelsea School of Art and the Central School of Art. During her time there, she visited several galleries and museums across Europe, which led her to transform her approach to abstraction. The 1968 exhibition Art of the Real at the Grand Palais in Paris was especially significant in this respect: Sanín’s encounter with the work of American artists associated with hard-edge abstraction stimulated her to adopt this language the following year. In 1971 Sanín moved to New York City where she continues to live and work. It was there that she consolidated the main elements of her pictorial language based on the use of geometry (vertical and horizontal bands of color with some diagonals) in symmetrical and balanced compositions. Sanín has exhibited on numerous occasions in her home country as well as in the United States and several countries in Latin America and Europe. She has participated in biennials and fairs, and has been included in collective exhibitions. In 2015 she received an Honorary Doctorate degree from the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín for her long artistic trajectory and her contributions to the history of modern art in Colombia.
