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Zilia Sánchez Domínguez

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Zilia Sánchez Dominguez
Born1926 (1926)
NationalityCuban
Known forabstract painter

Zilia Sánchez Dominguez (born 1926)[1] is a Puerto Rico-based Cuban artist from Havana. She started her career as a set designer and an abstract painter for theatre groups in Cuba before the Cuban revolution of 1953-59.[2] Sanchez blurs the lines between sculpture and painting by creating canvases layered with three dimensional protrusions and shapes. Her works are minimal in color, and have erotic overtones.[3]

History

[edit]
Maquinista, diptico (Machinist, diptych) (2008) at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC

Sánchez was born in Havana, Cuba.[4] Her mother was Cuban and her father Spanish.[5] In 1943 Sánchez studied at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes "San Alejandro" in Havana and later had her first solo exhibition in 1953.[6] Following Fidel Castro's rise to power, Sanchez moved to New York where she studied printmaking at Pratt Institute.[4]

She works in a pre-war wooden studio in the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan, where much of her artwork was destroyed by water damage in 2018 during Hurricane Maria.[7] Her work was included in the influential exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-85 at the Brooklyn Museum in 2018.[8]

She is a feminist pioneer in contemporary art, and in 2020 her work was featured in the scholarly researched and historic group show My Body My Rules, at the Pérez Art Museum Miami - Sánchez's work Untitled, from the series Topología Erótica (Erotic Topology) from 1970 is included in the museum's Caribbean Cultural Institute collection.[9][10]

Her Amazonas series features female warriors highlighting the female form[11] and her work has been described as having "sensual contours".[12] Sánchez's art style changed within the beginning years of her creating art. Early into her career she was focused on creating pieces that focused on the informal practices of abstract expressionism and visual language. By the mid-1960's she had started working on her sensual signature stretched canvas works.[13]

Her artwork has been described as "overlooked" and "rarely seen outside of Puerto Rico."[14]

In 2019, the Phillips Collection exhibited her first museum retrospective, covering her 70-year career,[15] and her work was included in the group show The Gift of Art, at Pérez Art Museum Miami. The exhibition highlighted important artworks within PAMM's permanent collection on Latinx and Latin American artists. Among the artists featured in the exhibition were José Bedia (Cuba), Teresa Margolles (Mexico), Roberto Matta (Chile), Oscar Murillo (Colombia), Amelia Peláez (Cuba), Wifredo Lam (Cuba), Tunga (Brazil), and Carmen Herrera (Cuba).[16]

Sánchez's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.[17] In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.[18]

Exhibitions

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  • 1957 - Exposición de pinturas: Zilia Sánchez, Galería Clan, Madrid.[19]
  • 1958 - Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana.[20]
  • 1970 - Estructuras en secuencia, Museo de Historia, Arqueología y Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico, San Juan.[19]
  • 1991 - Zilia Sánchez: Tres décadas: Los sesenta, los setenta, los ochenta. Museo Casa Roig, Humacao, Puerto Rico.[19]
  • 2000 - Heroic/Erotic, Museo de las Américas, San Juan, Puerto Rico.[21]
  • 2013 - Artists Space, New York City.[22]
  • 2014 - Zilia Sánchez: Heróicas eróticas en Nueva York, Galerie Lelong, New York.[19]
  • 2017 - 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, VIVA ARTE VIVA. [23]
  • 2019 - Soy Isla (I Am an Island), Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.[24]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Zilia Sánchez". AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
  2. ^ Cotter, Holland (2013-06-13). "Zilia Sánchez". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-02-07.
  3. ^ "Three Cuban Artists Take On the Moon at Galerie Lelong". Vogue. 30 April 2016. Retrieved 2019-02-07.
  4. ^ a b Furman, Anna (2019-11-29). "An Artist Who Transforms Paintings Into Cosmic Sculptures". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-12-01.
  5. ^ Sretenovic, Vesela (2019). Zilia Sánchez : Soy Isla. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. p. 2. ISBN 9780300233902.
  6. ^ Steinhauer, Jillian (2020-02-06). "Zilia Sánchez's Island of Erotic Forms". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  7. ^ Biesenbach, Klaus; Gregory, Christopher; Mclaughlin, Ariana (2018-01-25). "In Puerto Rico, Artists Rebuild and Reach Out". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-02-07.
  8. ^ "Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-85 at Brooklyn Museum | BLOUIN ARTINFO". www.blouinartinfo.com. Retrieved 2019-02-07.
  9. ^ "Untitled, from the series Topología erotica – Caribbean Cultural Institute". Retrieved 2023-08-22.
  10. ^ "MY BODY, MY RULES • Pérez Art Museum Miami". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved 2023-02-08.
  11. ^ D'Addario, John (2017-05-30). "Canvas is just a starting place for Puerto Rican contemporary artists at Newcomb show". The New Orleans Advocate.
  12. ^ "Puerto Rican Painters Who Fold, Cut, and Tear the Canvas". Hyperallergic. 2017-06-26. Retrieved 2019-02-07.
  13. ^ Guerrero, Marcela. "Zilia Sánchez". Aware.
  14. ^ Pogrebin, Robin; Sokol, Brett (2015-11-26). "Art Basel Miami Beach: A Focus on Female Artists". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-02-07.
  15. ^ Sayej, Nadja (2019-02-12). "Zilia Sánchez: 92-year-old artist gets her first museum retrospective". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-03-16.
  16. ^ "Pérez Art Museum Miami Announces Latin American and Latinx Art Fund • Pérez Art Museum Miami". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved 2023-04-05.
  17. ^ Women in abstraction. London : New York, New York: Thames & Hudson Ltd. ; Thames & Hudson Inc. 2021. p. 170. ISBN 978-0500094372.
  18. ^ a b c d "Zilia Sánchez". Hammer Museum. Retrieved 22 April 2023.
  19. ^ Guerrero, Marcela. "Zilia Sánchez". Hammer.
  20. ^ Alvarez Lezama, Manuel (Aug–Oct 2000). "Zilia Sanchez". Art Nexus. Issue 37: 132–33 – via Art & Architecture Complete. {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help)
  21. ^ Barral, Alberto (2013). "Zilia Sánchez". Art Nexus. 12 (90): 121–22 – via Art & Architecture Complete.
  22. ^ "ZILIA SÁNCHEZ". Galerie Lelong & Co. Retrieved April 8, 2022.
  23. ^ Vesela, Sretenović (2019-02-19). Zilia Sánchez : soy isla. Acevedo-Yates, Carla,, Cluck, Alyson, Phillips Collection, Museo de Arte de Ponce (Puerto Rico), Museo del Barrio (New York, N.Y.). New Haven. ISBN 978-0300233902. OCLC 1046461607.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)