The artist Cecilia Vicuña grew up in Chile’s Maipo Valley. As a teen she made her first abstract paintings in a studio built for her by her father. At university she majored in Fine Arts but was also drawn to politics and poetry. In 1973, when Pinochet’s coup d’état rocked the country, Vicuña self-exiled in London. She began using art to protest human-rights violations. For example, in 1979, on the street in front of Simón Bolívar’s residence, she spilled a large glass of white paint with a piece of red yarn she’d tied around the glass. The dashed paint referred to the almost 2,000 children who had died from contaminated milk. This exhibition at Lehman Maupin presents a recent series of paintings inspired by drawings the artist made in 1978, long since stolen or lost. —Elena Clavarino