Francisca Sutil, Francisca Sutil Mute Series Black Ink Painting Abstract Composition Chilean 2010

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Francisca Sutil (Chilean, b. 1952)
Abstract of black forms,
"Mute"
2010
Hand signed, titled, and dated verso with personal inscription
… Read more Francisca Sutil (Chilean, b. 1952)
Abstract of black forms,
"Mute"
2010
Hand signed, titled, and dated verso with personal inscription
Dimensions: Sheet: 14" H x 10.75" W

I believe this is Chinese ink on paper. It might be gouache or watercolor.

A striking and highly characteristic work on paper by Francisca Sutil (born 1952, Santiago, Chile) — one of the most celebrated and internationally collected Chilean abstract painters of her generation, whose work is held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., El Museo del Barrio in New York, the Museo de Artes Visuales in Santiago, and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, and who has been represented by Nohra Haime Gallery in New York for four decades.

This 2010 work belongs to Sutil’s celebrated Mute series — the body of work begun in 2009–2010 in which the artist returned to bold, deliberate mark-making after years of chromatic, surface-based abstraction. Executed in Chinese ink on white paper, the composition presents seven horizontal rows of hand-painted ovoid marks — each one a single brushstroke, slightly varied in scale, pressure, and orientation — arranged across the picture plane in a grid that is simultaneously rigorous and deeply human. The marks recall seeds, stones, leaves, eyes, or the individual strokes of Eastern calligraphic practice, and their subtle variation — no two exactly alike — gives the work a meditative, breath-like rhythm that rewards sustained looking.

Art critic John Yau, writing in Hyperallergic about the Mute series, described the work as “a major break” with Sutil’s earlier chromatic painting, noting the return of mark-making as the primary vehicle of meaning. The series connects Sutil to the tradition of artists who have explored the grid, repetition, and the single mark as meditative and conceptual gestures — among them Agnes Martin, On Kawara, Roman Opalka, and the calligraphic abstraction of the East Asian brush tradition — while remaining entirely and recognizably her own.

Executed at the very inception of the Mute series in 2010 — the year the series was first exhibited at Galería Animal in Santiago — this work is a prime and early example of one of the most significant bodies of work in Sutil’s career. The stark black-and-white palette, the handmade quality of each individual mark, and the cumulative visual energy of the whole composition make this an exceptionally strong and displayable work — bold enough to command a wall, intimate enough to reward close attention. A rare opportunity to acquire a significant early Mute series work on paper by one of Latin America’s most important living abstract artists.

Francisca Sutil (b. 1952)
Chilean Abstract Painter Printmaker Works on Paper Chromatic Abstraction Latin American Contemporary Art Nohra Haime Gallery National Gallery of Art El Museo New York Women Artist

Francisca Sutil (born 1952, Santiago, Chile) is one of the most significant and internationally recognized Chilean abstract painters of her generation — a painter, printmaker, and works-on-paper artist whose decades-long career has produced a deeply researched, chromatic body of work held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., El Museo del Barrio in New York, the Museo de Artes Visuales in Santiago, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery at the University of Texas at Austin, and the corporate collections of Chase Manhattan Bank, IBM, and the World Bank. Reviewed in Art in America, Hyperallergic, and numerous international publications, and long represented by Nohra Haime Gallery in New York — one of the leading galleries for Latin American contemporary art in the United States — Sutil is a pivotal figure in Chilean and Latin American abstract art, and one of the most important women artists working in abstraction in the Americas today.

Early Life, Education, and New York

Born in Santiago, Chile in 1952, Sutil received her early art education at the School of Art at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas (1972), before moving to New York City in the late 1970s to study printmaking at Pratt Institute — one of the most respected printmaking programs in America. Her first exhibition in New York, at Pratt Institute in 1982, launched a career that would keep her based in New York until 1992, when she returned permanently to Santiago. During her fifteen years in New York she became an active participant in the city’s vibrant Latin American art community, exhibiting regularly with Nohra Haime Gallery beginning in 1985, and developing the sustained, research-based painting practice that defines her career. Her earliest solo exhibitions included Galería Época in Santiago (1977); Universidad de Concepción, Chile (1977); Galerie C. de la Fontaine in Geneva, Switzerland (1978); and the Italian-Latin American Institute in Rome (1979) — an international debut of remarkable range for an artist in her twenties.

Artistic Evolution: Paper, Pigment, and Chromatic Abstraction

Sutil’s career falls into several clearly defined and deeply considered phases, each representing a sustained investigation of a single set of material and conceptual questions. She began her art career in the late 1970s making flat paper cast works — handmade paper objects that were simultaneously sculpture and surface. In 1981 she received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant from the Drawing Center in New York for paper conservation, signaling the seriousness with which the New York art establishment regarded her early material investigations. By 1986 she had begun using oil pastels on her handmade paper, and by 1988 she had fully committed to painting with pigmented wax — a medium that allowed her to build up surfaces of extraordinary chromatic richness and material complexity. This wax-and-pigment phase, which lasted through the 1990s and into the 2000s, established her international reputation as a chromatic painter of the first order — an artist whose surfaces reward sustained looking and whose palette ranges from the most delicate near-whites through saturated fields of color of astonishing depth and vibrancy.

Art critic and poet John Yau, writing in Hyperallergic, described her as “a chromatic artist” whose paintings are defined by the effacement of mark-making in favor of pure chromatic surface — an approach that connects her to the Color Field painting tradition of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Jules Olitski, while maintaining a distinctly Latin American sensibility rooted in material investigation and meditative process.

The Mute Series and New Directions

In 2009–2010, Sutil embarked on a major new body of work — the Mute series — executed in gouache and Chinese ink on paper, which critic John Yau described as “a major break” with her earlier chromatic work. In the Mute paintings, mark-making returns — bold, spare, and meditative — in compositions that draw on Eastern calligraphic traditions and the Western abstract painting lineage simultaneously. The Mute series was exhibited at Nohra Haime Gallery, New York (2013 and 2018), and at Galería Animal in Santiago (2013), receiving significant critical attention and further cementing her reputation as one of the most sustained and serious abstract painters working in Latin America.

Nohra Haime Gallery and Exhibition History

Sutil’s primary long-term gallery representation has been Nohra Haime Gallery at 730 Fifth Avenue in New York — one of the most respected galleries for international and Latin American contemporary art in the United States, and a gallery whose roster has included significant Latin American and international abstract painters. Her solo exhibitions at Nohra Haime span four decades: 1985, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992 (Voices of Silence), 1995 (Cerebrations), 1996 (Oils à l’Essence), 1997, 2000 (Abstraction Both Ways), 2003 (Transmutations), 2007 (Resonance), 2012 (Interlude), 2013 (Mute), 2017 (New Place, New Space), 2018 (Mute II), 2019 (Interpreting Layers, with Pierre Dunoyer), 2024 (Matter and Form), and 2025 (Pursuing the Impossible) — one of the longest and most sustained gallery relationships in the history of Latin American art in New York. She has also exhibited at Galería Patricia Ready in Santiago, Galería Animal in Santiago, Galería Época in Santiago, Galería Tomás Andreu in Santiago, and the MAVI (Museo de Artes Visuales) in Santiago.

Group Exhibitions and Institutional Presentations

Sutil’s group exhibition record includes: New Drawing in America, The Drawing Center, New York (1982) — one of the most important survey exhibitions of drawing in America; 30 Artists-Chile, Cayman Gallery, New York (1983); Papyrus Abstractus, Weston Art Council, Westport, CT (1982); New Works from the Permanent Collection, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2004); Chilean Art Crossing Borders, traveling exhibition (2004); Her Crowd: New Art by Women from Our Neighbors’ Private Collections, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT (2016–17) — an important institutional survey of women artists; Poligrafa, Art Basel Hong Kong (2016); the Armory Show, New York; Art Miami; Art Palm Beach; and Pinta Art Fair, New York. She delivered a lecture at Americas Society and SUNY Binghamton in 1990, further demonstrating her engagement with the New York Latin American intellectual and artistic community.

Museum Collections

Francisca Sutil’s paintings, prints, and works on paper are held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; El Museo del Barrio, New York; the Museo de Artes Visuales (MAVI), Santiago, Chile; the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela; the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin; and the corporate collections of Chase Manhattan Bank, IBM Santiago, and the World Bank, Washington, D.C.

Awards and Honors

Premio Marco Bontá, Best Exhibition of the Year for The Will of Silence; Fondo de Cultura y Desarrollo de las Artes fellowship; EMF fellowship; Artist Space fellowship; National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant, Drawing Center, New York (1981); Fellowship, Organization of American States; Premio de Gráfica, Bienal Internacional de Arte.

Movements and Artistic Associations

Sutil’s work has been associated with Chromatic Abstraction, Color Field painting, Abstract Expressionism, Latin American Abstraction, and the broader tradition of international abstract painting rooted in material and process investigation. Her practice connects her to the Color Field painters Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Jules Olitski; to the process-based abstraction of Eva Hesse and Agnes Martin; and to the Latin American abstract tradition that includes Mira Schendel, Lygia Clark, Gego, and Alejandro Otero. Her use of handmade paper and pigmented wax connects her specifically to the Arte Povera tradition and to the generation of Latin American women artists — including Lygia Clark, Mira Schendel, and Ana Mendieta — who redefined the possibilities of painting and works on paper in the late twentieth century.

Legacy

Francisca Sutil remains one of the most actively exhibited and collected Chilean and Latin American abstract painters working today — a figure whose four-decade career bridges the New York art world of the 1980s and the contemporary Latin American art market, and whose work is increasingly recognized as essential to any serious collection of Latin American abstraction. Her paintings, works on paper, and prints are actively sought by collectors and institutions worldwide.

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