Tomás Sánchez, Landscapes and Landfill Paintings

Tomás Sánchez is an important and celebrated Cuban artist. The artist is best known for his landscape paintings, but he also sculpts and works with photography. Exhibitions in over 30 countries, including Mexico, the United States, Japan, Italy, and France have shown work done by the artist.

Sanchez’s landscape paintings show his love of a nature lost to man. This is a nature that is untouched by the hand of man. Sanchez paints completely from imagination since the island of Cuba has been almost completely deforested for centuries. A huge influence for Sanchez was the Hudson River School. The artist adds a spiritual element like the painters from the Hudson River School, but his comes from meditation and yoga instead of from Stylistically, the paintings of Sanchez are far removed from Romanticism, they have a dreamlike surreal look. 

Basurero en la playa - 1991 

While living in Mexico, Sanchez did a series of landfill paintings. Mexico’s overflowing landfills served as inspiration for the paintings. The above painting is very much in the style I would like to work in. I like that he uses a beautiful landscape and shows how it is destroyed by the landfill. It shows what is lost and what can be regained.