TOMAS SANCHEZ

TOMAS SANCHEZ One of Cuba's leading contemporary artists, Tomás Sánchez (b. 1948) is known above of all for his lush and timeless tropical landscapes. Having made his name as part of the Volumen Uno movement, which is credited with transforming Cuban Art, Sánchez won numerous prizes in his homeland, including the Amelia Peláez Award for painting at the inaugural Havana Biennale in 1984, and was given a retrospective at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana while still in his thirties. His landscapes are inspired by different elements of real places in Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico and Central America. However, they aren't pictures of specific places nor are they postcards; they are idealized mixes of landscapes created through the years he spent practicing yoga. Through this mediative expression he likes to represent the different states of his mind allowing one to breathe in the peace, that even the artist's personality transmits, just by looking at his pieces. All of his work is an expression of parallel interests that cannot be reduced to a mere chronological progression. In it, landscape enjoys a special place, but his other themes like expressionism, trash can as well as his media - watercolor, oil, acrylic, tempera, ink, pastel coexist in a ceaseless motion of collaboration.