In the catalogue text for the exhibition Fanny Sanín: Obras de 1960 a 1986 held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá, John Stringer, the Australian curator of the show, analyzes the work produced by Fanny Sanín, a Colombian artist who lives in New York, over a twenty-five year period. Stringer asserts that two main tendencies—Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism—permeate Sanín’s art. He argues that the various stages of her production are tied by tonality, non-referential titles, the pursuit of a formal order, and a personal approach to color. Stringer divides Sanín’s work into six phases: Genesis: 1964-1968; Calligraphy: 1964-1968; Transition: 1969-1970; Stripes: 1970-1974; Symmetry: 1974-1980; and Centrality: 1980-1986. In Stringer’s view, Sanin’s use of polychrome, which is characteristic of her work, distinguishes her from other younger abstract artists from Colombia like Manolo Vellojín and Álvaro Marín. He states that “the generation of abstract artists that has followed Edgar Negret and Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar has been inclined to the monochromic and the imaginary.”

In this text, Australian artist and curator John Stringer (1937-2007) analyzes the work produced by Fanny Sanín (b. 1938) over the course of three decades. It provides a unique understanding of how the work of Sanín, a Colombian artist based in New York, developed in well defined stages that bear the influence of international trends. For this reason, this text is important not only to the study of Sanín’s work but also to the study of Colombian abstract art in general. 

The periodization of Sanín’s work that Stringer formulates begins in 1960, the year she graduated from the Art School of the Universidad de los Andes. A few years later, in 1966—when she was living in Mexico—Sanín received critical acclaim for a solo exhibition at Galería Colseguros. Specifically, art critic Marta Traba (1923–1983) asserted that Sanín’s work contained formulations unusual in Colombian abstraction. 

Fanny Sanín has lived much of her life outside Colombia. In 1962 and 1963, she resided in the United States (Illinois), where she studied printmaking and art history; from 1963 to 1966, she lived in Monterrey (Mexico); from 1966 to 1969, in England (London); from 1969 to 1971, she returned to Monterrey; since 1971, she has lived in New York City. Her first solo show was held at the Galería de Arte Moderno in Monterrey in 1964, the year when—pursuant to her move to Mexico—she began another stage in her production, one in which drawing figured centrally. Stringer calls this her “calligraphy” phase. Though she lived elsewhere, Sanín’s tie to Colombia is evidenced by the number of exhibitions held in that country over the course of three decades. The retrospective Fanny Sanín: Obras de 1960 a 1986, organized by the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá in 1986, is the largest show of her work ever held in Colombia.

John Stringer worked in the United States at different moments in his career: from 1970 to 1975, he was the assistant director of the New York Museum of Modern Art’s International Program; from 1979 to 1988, he was the director of visual arts for the American Society (formerly the Center for Inter-American Relations), also in New York. At the time of his death in 2007, he was the curator of the Kerry Stokes Collection at the Australian Capital Equity in Perth, which opened in 1992.