When Katia Santibañez came to New York from Paris in 1990, she began painting the façades of buildings and rooftop views of the cityscape. Soon thereafter, Santibañez came to the realization that she preferred to develop her compositions with an underlying framework. She found that a base layer as simple as a grid or sequentially spaced lines allows her to build a more complex composition in which to explore the relationship between the natural and the manmade. This intricate, intimately sized abstraction simultaneously references a classical architectural colonnade (like one of those on the museum’s façade) and a dense group of trees in a forest. Santibañez infuses these elements with a visual rhythm. She has said, "I live in two different but complementary worlds: the city and the countryside. . . . There is an important connection between architecture, nature, and art— where the ideas of order and power, structure and balance, chaos and beauty talk to each other.”

Label from Drawing: The Beginning of Everything, July 8–October 15, 2017