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Lot Essay
“For many years I have insisted that the garbage dumps and the works that depict nature in a more contemplative fashion are part of a whole,” Sánchez recently remarked. “Both are landscapes and both directly address our relationship with nature. A landscape where nature is in its most pristine state somehow expresses it in all its potential, that hopeful narrative that is at the centre of all the cataclysms that lie ahead—at least to those who live attentive to the gradual destruction of the environment. The dumps, which are so colourful and imposing, bear witness to these cataclysms, the impact of man on his environment. It is a duality, I believe that one could not exist without the other” (“Interview with Tomás Sánchez,” Avant Arte, 8 March 2021).
Landscape has long remained the fulcrum of Sánchez’s practice, a medium of introspection and of conscience. “My approach to landscape is the result of a confrontation with my interiorization of the land,” he explains. “I’d say that this is a more spiritual—and more ecological—attitude toward landscape.” Sánchez lobbied the Cuban state unsuccessfully to establish an ecological foundation, and his stewardship of nature has manifested in both pristine, idealized landscapes, like Sonido de nubes, and their inverse—garbage dumps, like the present painting, that describe the waste and ruin of the world. Sánchez left Cuba for Mexico in 1989, and in the garbage dumps of Mexico City he found a new kind of landscape, a wasteland more colorful than the tropics he had painted before and an immediately irresistible subject. “I put more colour into my paintings of garbage,” he admits. “With a range of colours I can achieve more of an atmosphere” (quoted in E. Sullivan, “Interview with Tomás Sánchez,” Tomás Sánchez, Milan, 2003, pp. 19 and 21).
Basurero de colores bajo la tormenta belongs to an ongoing series of post-apocalyptic landfills teeming with the flotsam and jetsam of modern life—a rainbow of Coca-Cola cans, cardboard boxes, and overstuffed trash bags that appear in an eternal state of decay. Here, the garbage wilts under a driving rain that descends in slanting sheets, lashing across a slate sky. A fire burns against the rain—a sign, perhaps, of coming purification or salvation amid an otherwise desolate ground. A glimpse of a forest in the distance, a small songbird, and an auspicious clump of flowers, improbably sprouting beside a pile of trash bags, may yet suggest the resilience of the natural world. “I am not a moralist, but it is my way of insisting that there is a future scenario for which we are collectively responsible,” Sánchez explains of his dystopian images. “Every detail of the garbage, which is usually massive in my work, bears embedded depictions of who we are as humanity. I don’t know if my paintings can change the way we relate to nature, but in my experience, it leads us to that first stage, which is reflection” (“Interview with Tomás Sánchez,” Avant Arte, op. cit.).
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
Landscape has long remained the fulcrum of Sánchez’s practice, a medium of introspection and of conscience. “My approach to landscape is the result of a confrontation with my interiorization of the land,” he explains. “I’d say that this is a more spiritual—and more ecological—attitude toward landscape.” Sánchez lobbied the Cuban state unsuccessfully to establish an ecological foundation, and his stewardship of nature has manifested in both pristine, idealized landscapes, like Sonido de nubes, and their inverse—garbage dumps, like the present painting, that describe the waste and ruin of the world. Sánchez left Cuba for Mexico in 1989, and in the garbage dumps of Mexico City he found a new kind of landscape, a wasteland more colorful than the tropics he had painted before and an immediately irresistible subject. “I put more colour into my paintings of garbage,” he admits. “With a range of colours I can achieve more of an atmosphere” (quoted in E. Sullivan, “Interview with Tomás Sánchez,” Tomás Sánchez, Milan, 2003, pp. 19 and 21).
Basurero de colores bajo la tormenta belongs to an ongoing series of post-apocalyptic landfills teeming with the flotsam and jetsam of modern life—a rainbow of Coca-Cola cans, cardboard boxes, and overstuffed trash bags that appear in an eternal state of decay. Here, the garbage wilts under a driving rain that descends in slanting sheets, lashing across a slate sky. A fire burns against the rain—a sign, perhaps, of coming purification or salvation amid an otherwise desolate ground. A glimpse of a forest in the distance, a small songbird, and an auspicious clump of flowers, improbably sprouting beside a pile of trash bags, may yet suggest the resilience of the natural world. “I am not a moralist, but it is my way of insisting that there is a future scenario for which we are collectively responsible,” Sánchez explains of his dystopian images. “Every detail of the garbage, which is usually massive in my work, bears embedded depictions of who we are as humanity. I don’t know if my paintings can change the way we relate to nature, but in my experience, it leads us to that first stage, which is reflection” (“Interview with Tomás Sánchez,” Avant Arte, op. cit.).
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park