Tomas Sanchez
[Cuban Symbolist Landscape Painter, b.1948]
Biography
Tomás Sánchez, one of the most important and celebrated living Cuban artists. Sánchez is a commanding realist much like the Chilean artist Claudio Bravo, although his landscapes are imagined or dreamed. His work is meticulous in its breathtaking detail, but the objective of the artist is not so much the recreation of reality as it is displaying the magnificence of a lyrical universe. In this respect, Sánchez is closer to his compatriot, the author Alejo Carpentier, or perhaps to the Nobel laureate Gabriel García Marquez, in their insistence on the magical realism of Latin American existence, than he is to the North American model of hyperrealism.
Tomás Sánchez is a creator of deeply spiritual images of nature; his various scenes of lush vegetation create an ambience of profound peace, achieving a transcendent, meditative state that radiates spirituality. His paintings may, on one level, represents metaphors for a paradise long-lost to humanity.
On another plane, they may be analyzed as allegories of the Cuban landscape-dreams of a place which may never be re-captured, even in memory. Like all great landscape paintings of the past, the view of nature by Sánchez communicates a respect and connection with the forces of the earth. Tomas Sanchez was born in Aguada de Pasajeros, a small town in the province of Las Villas, Cuba, in 1948. Completed studies in the San Alejandro School of Art and later went on to the Cubanacan school of art. Multitalented in painting, drawings, engraving, and designs.
He has had several personal exhibitions in Cuba, Spain, Greece, Austria, etc. He first gained international recognition in 1980, when he won first place in the 19th International Joan Miro Prize of Drawing in Barcelona, Spain. Sanchez presently lives and works in Florida and Costa Rica. Another famous Cuban artist is Wifredo Lam.
|
