January 18 - March 14, 2024
From Sicardi Ayers Bacino:
“Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino is pleased to present Eyes Wide Open, the gallery’s second solo exhibition featuring the work of Fanny Sanín [b. 1938, Colombia/Lives in New York], in our main gallery. The exhibition features a selection of the artist’s work from her early oil paintings of the 1960s through her current production, providing an expansive understanding of the development of her ouevre from gestural abstraction to hard-edge concrete abstraction while tracing the common threads underlying the progression. Lawrence Rinder has curated the exhibition and written the accompanying text.
Join us for an opening reception on Thursday, January 18, from 6-8 pm.
As stated by Rinder, “The story of Fanny Sanín’s life in art—as told by herself and others—divides into two distinct chapters: first, her work in oil paint and gestural abstraction; second, her later work in hard-edge, geometric acrylics. This duality is usually described as an advancement, from an early period inspired by—and perhaps somewhat derivative of—European tachistes as well as Sanín’s Latin American contemporaries, to a more mature period which, though drawing heavily on work by artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella, is seen as more original and, therefore, significant. This interpretation, however, may be excessively formal, focusing too strongly on qualities of shape, line, surface, and composition in making its case. Observing Sanín’s works from these two periods—which we have been told to see as diametrically opposed (emotion vs. analysis, gesture vs. measure)—there is nevertheless something that transcends their formal differences and draws both periods together in common cause. Uniting her art across the decades is an idiosyncratic sensibility that employs dramatic tonal contrasts to evoke intimations of spiritual sentience. While Sanín has said on numerous occasions that her art is non-objective, ‘…free of any reference to external reality…,’ when pressed, she will reveal that there are always two implicit subjects: self and spirit.”
Fanny Sanín’s works are represented in several major collections including the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France; Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Massachusetts, USA; The Diane and Bruce Halle Collection of Latin American Art, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA; Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA), Colchester, England, UK; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), California, USA; Museo de Arte Abstracto Manuel Felguérez (MAAMF), Zacatecas, Mexico; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá (MAC), Colombia; Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico; El Museo del Barrio, New York City, New York, USA; Museo La Tertulia, Cali, Colombia; Museo Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Texas, USA; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, USA; New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), Louisiana, USA; New York Public Library (NYPL), New York City, New York, USA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC, USA; and UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), California, USA.”
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