Zañartu was a Chilean artist born in Paris, France, and moved to Chile in 1938. From there he moved to New York City in 1944 where he was associated with the Atelier 17 print studio. There he worked closely with Stanley William Hayter and also taught classes as well as serving as associate director of the studio. When the studio moved to Paris, Zañartu followed, directing the Paris Atelier 17 from 1950 to 1957. In addition to printmaking, Zañartu maintained a painting studio.
In 1958 he was the recipient of the Guggenheim International Award. Zañartu was an invited lecturer at Washington University in St Louis, MO, 1968-1970; at Rice University, Houston TX, 1979-1980; and York University in Toronto, Canada in 1979. From 1989-1994 his work was exhibited in Santiago at Galerie Praxis and Marlborough Gallery. A retrospective of his work was held at the Galería Tomás Andreu in Santiago, Chile in 1994. He died in Paris on 13 June 2000.
Recent exhibitions to include his works include “Stanley William Hayter & the World in an Atelier: Converging Stories of Surrealism and Abstraction, 1927-1964”, at Musee de Beaux-Artes de Rennes. In 2016 Zanartu’s works were included in an exhibition at the Syracuse University Art Museum, “About Prints: Stanley William Hayter and the Legacy of Atelier 17”. That exhibition traveled to the Stark Galleries at Texas A&M University in 2019. An exhibition of illustrated books by Hayter and Zañartu is in planning stages and will travel to French museums.
Zañartu's work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Bibliotèque Nationale, Paris, National Museet, Stockholm, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago, Museum des Stadt, Wuppertal, Germany; the Albright– Knox Art Gallery; the British Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Kemper Art Museum, as well as the Art Institute of Chicago, Centre Georges Pompidou, Harvard Art Museums, the New York Public Library, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
