Learning Specialist, Carolina Malagamba: Something that stands out to me about Fanny Sanin’s art is that the texture of the paint is extremely smooth.
Sanín, as well as the other artists in this gallery, use a style called “hard edged abstraction,” and it’s characterized by flat colors, geometric patterns, and super crisp edges where one color stops and another begins.
Curator, Smooth Nzewi: It’s an intentional act to sort of remove the dramatic brushstrokes and emotional gestures. The artist sudddenly seems absent from the painting, and then you enter this incredible flat voice. No storytelling—just an encounter with you, the color, the shape.
Carolina Malagamba: And it’s interesting because Sanín didn’t always paint this way. And in her earlier works, she actually was using oil paint. But when she started making paintings like these, she switched to acrylic.
Fanny Sanín: I felt that the oil dries very slow, and it gives so much shine and left the brushstrokes. That’s why I changed to acrylic. It dries fast, and also the color is more flat.
Carolina Malagamba: With acrylic paint, you can dilute it—so make it more watery—where you layer the thin colors and then you almost mix a new color.
Fanny Sanín: The color is not only one layer. I never apply a color straight from the tube. It’s only mixture, and the color gradually becomes the color that I wanted. And then I sti there and I look at the painting and see how it’s related to the other colors. And it’s a lot of meditation too.