Tomás Sánchez

Sánchez’s symbolic landscapes have made him one of the most important living Cuban artists. Part of Volumen Uno in the 80s, a movement that resisted the heavily censored Cuban art of the time, he has since received international recognition, with auction prices in excess of $600,000 USD. Inspired by the Romantics, Sánchez paints the wilderness of his homeland, as well as vast panoramic views of garbage dumps. The works are incredibly detailed with a lush tropical palette, encompassing the physical wonder of the natural world, its immense spiritual power, and humankind's tendency to destroy it. Small human figures set against waterfalls, lagoons and palm trees engage with humankind's insignificance, search for inner peace, and broader environmental issues. Steeped in allegory, Sánchez’s art reinterprets traditional modes of painting to create an uncanny paradise that is at once hopeful and threatening.

While Sánchez is best known for his hyperreal landscapes, he has also experimented in print, sculpture, photography, drawing, and with different styles of painting. His earlier works under the title Expressionism explore a looser painted gesture steeped, as ever, in symbolism. El Circo/The Circus (1974), is an oil on canvas depicting a circus tent with a raucous crowd watching Jesus being carried on the cross. There is a red bullfighting cloth on the stage, but a chicken instead of a bull; the two men pulling the cross and gearing the crowd wear red colonialist hats. Various angels and the Virgin Mary are among the audience members, all of whom watch with both eagerness and dread. The work plays with tropes of religious iconography as a sardonic metaphor for the performativity of religion, colonialism, politics and populism, whether ancient or contemporary.