Tomas Sanchez

By LatAm ARTE

Tomás Sánchez is a Cuban painter and engraver, born in 1948 in Aguada de Pasajeros, Cienfuegos. At the age of 16, he moved to Havana to study at the San Alejandro School of Plastic Arts, later transferring to the National School of Art (ENA), where he graduated in 1971. That same year, he earned the First Prize in Drawing for Young Artists at the National Exhibition of Arts. From graduation until the mid-1970s, he taught engraving at ENA, earning top painting and lithography awards along the way. He then worked in stage design for a children’s theater and collaborated with a UNESCO puppet troupe. In 1980, he won the prestigious Joan Miró International Drawing Prize, a milestone that launched his international career. Over the years, he received multiple accolades including a national painting prize, a medal in graphic arts, and honors at international biennials. In 1985, he was honored with a retrospective at Cuba’s National Museum of Fine Arts; his career later took him to Mexico, then to Miami and Costa Rica. Sánchez is known for landscapes that balance serene tropical scenes with unsettling depictions of waste—both vision born from his imagination. Rooted in meditation, his art blends hyperrealism with spirituality, evoking silence, solitude, and the sublime in nature. He is widely regarded as the most expensive living Cuban painter and is celebrated internationally for his poetic and technically masterful compositions.