JUAN SÁNCHEZ: PURSUIT OF AN ISLAND

Juan Sánchez, Mataron al pastor (Martin Luther King, Jr.), 2020, mixed media collage on masonite panels (diptych), 12" X 24”

By Jonathan Goodman

The artist Juan Sánchez is an established name in contemporary art. His Puerto Rican parents took part in the wave of immigration from the Island to the United States in the 1940s and ‘50s; Sánchez was born in Brooklyn and raised in New York, where he was educated in art at Cooper Union. Later, he received his MFA from Rutgers. Although the artist has been based in New York for many years—he is a professor of art at Hunter College—he remains closely tied to his Puerto Rican cultural legacy. His work, consisting of paintings, printmaking, and photography and video, has often been politically oriented; his paintings include photos of Latin American social heroes such as Che Guevara and Pedro Albizu Campos, an important initial supporter of Puerto Rican independence, who spent years in jail for his beliefs.

Sánchez grew up during a time of fierce social and political upheaval, and he has remained true to his experience, even as he has been increasingly accepted by art’s mainstream. His oeuvre embodies questions of commitment, especially in regard to the tattered identity of Puerto Rico, which remain ongoing. So it is fair to see Sánchez, even in a relatively mature segment of his life and art, as a supporter of a place and culture that has been forcibly relegated to a marginal status. The political situation does not look like it will be solved soon, but the cultural productivity of an artist like Sánchez can be remarked upon and supported, as a way of identifying both the output of a highly gifted artist but also the art of a sensibility that remains adamantly Latino. The art stands as an enterprise in independence, rather than succumbing to the blandishments of the dominant culture in which Sánchez works and lives.

At this moment in time, when events are yet again proving how deeply prejudicial the American fabric remains, it becomes more important than ever to record the artistic efforts of someone like Sánchez, who mediates his origins with the academic legacies he has been trained in (not to mention his visits to city museums and galleries). One of his great gifts is his refusal to incorporate any easy content into his art. But, even so, his work displays the graphic achievement that is traditionally a strength of Latino art, in Puerto Rico particularly. Sánchez’s collages, which introduce photos, usually with social content, into the composition, can be seen as part of his graphic inheritance. But they are also more than that, being an introduction to the colonial history that has beset Puerto Rico for a long time—thus, Sánchez works as a witness to a culture in need of greater recognition.