Tomás Sánchez is a painter of contradictions. He offers lush utopias, landscapes so pristine they seem untouched by time, yet his brush is equally at home in the chaos of human excess. Towering mountains of waste, surreal and oppressive, rise alongside his tranquil forests and still waters. These dual worlds—Eden and ruin—are not separate; they are reflections of the same reality, two halves of a whole that define his work.

Tomás Sánchez, the eldest of two sons from a middle-class Cuban family, was born into a household where his father worked as a sugar worker and businessman, while his mother instilled in him a deep sensitivity toward painting. His artistic journey began at the age of 16 when he moved to Havana in 1964 to study at the prestigious National Academy of Fine Arts San Alejandro. Though he interrupted his studies in 1966, he resumed his education in 1967 at the newly established National Art School (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, marking the beginning of his ascent in the Cuban art scene.

Following his graduation, Sánchez remained at ENA as a professor of engraving until 1976. During this period, he won the First Prize in Painting and Lithography at the National Salon of Professors and Instructors of Art in Havana (1975). From 1976 to 1978, Sánchez expanded his creative reach by working as a stage designer at the Teatro de Muñecos, the Children’s Theater of Cuba’s Ministry of Culture.

A pivotal moment in Sánchez’s career occurred in 1980 when he was awarded the First Prize at the XIX Edition of the International Prize of Drawing Joan Miró for his piece Desde las aguas blancas. This recognition propelled him onto the international stage, leading to his first major exhibition at the Joan Miró Foundation, Centre of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Spain, in 1981.

Sánchez’s career has been marked by numerous accolades, including the National Prize for Painting at the Havana Biennial in 1984, the Medal at the V American Biennial of Graphic Art in Cali, Colombia (1986), and an Honorable Mention at the International Painting Biennial in Cuenca, Ecuador (1987). His works have been exhibited in over 30 countries, establishing him as a significant figure in contemporary art. Notable solo exhibitions include Tomás Sánchez. Retrospective at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana (1985) and Tomás Sánchez. Different Worlds at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (1996). In 2008, to celebrate his 60th birthday, Sánchez held a major exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey, Mexico.

In May 2019, three of his paintings were featured in Christie’s Latin American Art sales, further solidifying his place in the international art market. Throughout his career, Sánchez has remained a distinguished figure, revered for his evocative works that explore the intersection of nature, memory, and human experience.

For the first time in 17 years, Sánchez’s vision unfolds in a solo exhibition at Marlborough New York. Titled Inner Landscape, the show is a culmination of over a decade of meticulous painting and deep introspection. Every canvas is a portal into the artist’s meditative mind, a place where serenity and catastrophe coexist in delicate balance.

Painting with a twist​

Tomás Sánchez does not merely depict landscapes; he evokes them. His forests, rivers, and sky-drenched horizons transcend specific geographies, emerging from the depths of his memory, his personal surroundings, and the uncharted realms of the subconscious. Each scene is a fusion of experience and imagination, where the act of meditation is transformed into a vivid, immersive expression of the mind’s boundless terrain. Through this alchemical process, Sánchez creates landscapes that are as much about inner reflection as they are about the world outside.

In his work, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, and the ordinary, extraordinary. Sánchez’s landscapes invite viewers to lose themselves in the gentle, almost dreamlike fluidity of his brushstrokes, where time seems suspended, and the natural world takes on an ethereal quality. What might appear as a serene vista is, in fact, a complex interplay of memory, emotion, and spirituality—an invitation to step into a realm where the external and internal worlds merge seamlessly. Through this unique approach, Sánchez redefines the landscape genre, offering not just a view of nature, but an exploration of the very process of seeing and experiencing the world around us.

Sánchez does not simply paint landscapes; he conjures them. His forests, rivers, and cloud-heavy skies are not tied to a single geography but emerge from within—a fusion of remembered travels, his own garden, and the boundless terrain of the subconscious. This is the alchemy of meditation transmuted into art.

When I enter a state of meditation, it’s as if I’m in a jungle or a forest, the mind enters into a great exhilarated state, like an exuberant jungle where you can experience fear, desire, anguish.

– Sánchez explains.

His canvases, then, are not passive depictions of nature; they pulse with emotion, shaped by an interior experience of the wild rather than by mere observation.

His signature lone figure—small, contemplative, dwarfed by nature’s immensity—repeats across his paintings, an enigmatic presence embodying the viewer’s own quiet surrender to the sublime. These figures are not explorers or conquerors; they are witnesses.

Landscapes of Excess and Environmental Reckoning

If Sánchez’s forests are meditations, his wastelands are reckonings. Here, the delicate balance of nature collapses beneath the weight of human consumption. Monolithic heaps of discarded objects—plastic, metal, forgotten relics of civilization—loom against hazy, apocalyptic horizons. The compositions echo the Dutch vanitas tradition, where the material world is exposed as fleeting and doomed to decay.

And yet, these paintings are not without beauty. They are painted with the same care, the same precision, the same reverence for form and atmosphere as his paradisiacal scenes. The message is clear: paradise and ruin are intertwined. One does not exist without the other.

A Painter of the Mind’s Eye

Sánchez’s work transcends landscape painting. It is a meditation, an ecological critique, a psychological journey. Whether through the luminous stillness of his forests or the haunting weight of his trash-scapes, he captures something both deeply personal and universally resonant: the tension between longing for harmony and the relentless presence of entropy.

His Inner Landscape exhibition is more than a showcase of paintings—it is an invitation. An invitation to step into nature as Sánchez experiences it: both tranquil and overwhelming, both eternal and on the brink of destruction. It is a call to reflect on where we stand within this balance, to witness, and perhaps, to meditate.

His Inner Landscape exhibition is more than a showcase of paintings—it is an invitation. An invitation to step into nature as Sánchez experiences it: both tranquil and overwhelming, both eternal and on the brink of destruction. It is a call to reflect on where we stand within this balance, to witness, and perhaps, to meditate.