In Abstract, Fanny Sanin

From June of 2015 to July of 2016, the Museo Nacional de Colombia presents the exhibition titled "In Abstract, Exhibition to Mark the Donation by Fanny Sanin." As its title suggests, the show marks artist Fanny Sanin's donation to the Museo Nacional de Colombia, offering a group of works that narrate the artistic trajectory of this Colombian painter, recognized by the international art community as a referent of the history of Colombian art. "In Abstract…" offers a survey of the different periods of Fanny Sanin's work, reveals the development of her pictorial work over the years and reflects her constancy and discipline in the exploration of color and composition. Fanny Sanin began her artistic production during the 1960s, a period in which the abstract art movement in Colombia was consolidated. At that time, she stood out among her teachers and contemporaries—like Juan Antonio Roda, Eduardo Ramírez-Villamizar, David Manzur and Armando Villegas—for her expressive paintings rendered with patches of paint, translucencies and thick brushstrokes. Fanny Sanin's works are based on an in-depth study of the qualities of paint, an exploration that led her to find the elements that now characterize her artistic oeuvre in the fringes and segments of flat color, in symmetrical structures and in diagonals and mirror compositions. The names that Sanin gives to her works reflect a search for pure abstraction as they are chronologically sequenced titles without referents. Through her work, Sanin invites viewers to the interpretation and reflection that surrounds the configuration of the two-dimensional space and the tensions between forms and colors. The exhibition "In Abstract…" consists of twenty works, of which nine are part of the donation that Fanny Sanin made to the Museo Nacional de Colombia. According to a communiqué from the cultural institution, the piece Óleo Nº 1B (Oil No. 1B, 1962), was exhibited for the first time in the Panopticon (Building: National Museum of Colombia) in the context of the 14th Artists Salon, and now returns to become part of the Museum's collection. The museum added that "In Abstract, Exhibition to Mark the Donation by Fanny Sanin" became a reality thanks to the generosity of Fanny Sanin, the sponsorship of Itaú BBA, and the support of the Amigos del Museo Nacional."