Emilio Sanchez

Cuban/American, 1921-1999

Born in Camagüey, Cuba, in 1921, Emilio Sanchez began his formal artistic training at the Art Students League after relocating to New York in 1944. Over his more than fifty‑year career, he developed a visual vocabulary centered on the effects of light, shadow, architecture, and strong compositional structure. Early works from the 1950s include stylized figurative scenes, portraits, tropical landscapes, and views of New York, before his subject matter shifted more fully to architectural forms: facades, windows, buildings, and cityscapes.

Through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, Sanchez’s palette and structures evolved toward greater abstraction, though always anchored in geometry and natural light. He traveled widely, drawing inspiration from the architecture and urban modernity he saw in the Caribbean, Latin America, the Mediterranean.

His works are held in major public collections, including the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and MoMA, and he was the subject of more than sixty solo exhibitions across the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. In 1974 he won First Prize at the San Juan Biennial. In his will he established a foundation to preserve, disseminate, and support artistic culture in his name. Today, collectors value Sanchez’s paintings and prints for their architectural precision and embodiment of presence.