Juan Sánchez, also Juan Sanchez (born July 1954) is an American artist and educator. He is an important Nuyorican cultural figure to emerge in the second half of the 20th century.'Hyperallergic Arlene Dávila, "Juan Sánchez's Nuyorican State of Mind," October 23, 2022. His works include photography, paintings and mixed media works.Harper, Glenn. Interventions and Provocations: Conversations on Art, Culture, and Resistance. SUNY Press, 1998.
Biography Juan Sánchez was born in July 1954 in Brooklyn, New York. His parents are from Puerto Rico. Juan Sánchez earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Cooper Union in New York in 1977 and his Master of Fine Arts at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1980.
He is part of a generation of artists—such as Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Pepón Osorio and Papo Colo—who in the 1980s to 1990s explored questions of ethnic, racial and national identity in their work, be it through painting, video, performance or installation. Sánchez specifically became known for producing brightly hued mixed media canvases that addressed issues of Puerto Rican life in the U.S. and on the island. Of his work, critic Lucy Lippard once wrote: "it teaches us new ways of seeing what surrounds us."
Sanchez combines painting and photography with other media clippings and found objects to confront America's political policies and social practices concerning his parents' homeland of Puerto Rico. Sanchez often specifically addresses Puerto Rico's battle for independence and the numerous obstacles facing disadvantaged Puerto Ricans in America.
Sánchez is a professor of painting, photography and combined media at Hunter College in New York City.
His pieces are held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.
Sanchez's work was included in the 2025 exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 at the National Gallery of Art.
Public Art Commissions "Reaching Out For Each Other," 2006, a series of faceted glass windows and wind screens at the 176th Street Stop of the 4 train, in The Bronx, for New York's Metropolitan Transportation AuthorityMTA Arts & Design online commissions database "Our Transcendence is Our Reign," 2009, a series of two murals and more than a dozen friezes for the James Monroe Educational Campus in the Bronx Hutchinson Modern Juan Sánchez Viewing Room "Prevalence: Sacred Traces," 2019, a 12' x 22' mural created for the Duncan Student Center at the University of Notre DameUniversity Communications, Notre Dame
Honors and awards John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 1988"262 Chosen for Guggenheim Awards", New York Times, 17 April 1988. Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship, 1995Joan Mitchell Foundation: "Juan Sanchez named fellow in the Painters & Sculptors" Program, 1995 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, 2003New York Foundation for the Arts, 2003 Fellowship announcement for Juan Sanchez Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2001 and 2007Pollock-Krasner Foundation: Juan Sanchez page
Selected solo exhibitions Juan Sánchez: Rican/Structed Convictions, Exit Art, New York, NY, 1989Haith Trust Digital Library, Juan Sanchez: Rican/Structed Convictions, at Exit Art, 1989 Juan Sánchez: Printed Convictions/Convicciones Grabadas, Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ, 1998International Center for the Arts of the Americas. Documents related to Juan Sanchez exhibition, Printed Convictions/Convicciones Grabadas at the Jersey City Museum in 1998. 1898: Rican/Struction, Multilayered Impressions, BronxMuseum of Art, Bronx, NY, 1998PR Dream: Juan Sanchez biography Juan Sánchez: Rican/Structions: Paintings of the 90’s, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, 1999PS1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1), Juan Sánchez: RICANSTRUCTIONS, December 1999 Juan Sánchez: Paintings, Prints, Poetry, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami, FL, 2001 Rican/Structions: A Selection of Works by Juan Sánchez, Bernstein Gallery, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 2003Zimmerman, Marc. Defending Their Own in the Cold: The Cultural Turns of U.S. Puerto Ricans, 2011. The Masters Invitational: Juan Sánchez, Hewitt Gallery of Art, Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY, 2006Hewitt Gallery of Art, Juan Sanchez: The Master's Invitational , April 2006. TRIPTYCH/TRIPTICO: RETRATOS/PORTRAITS, Zoellner Arts Center Main Gallery, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, 2009Leigh University, Calendar of Events, LU Art Galleries: Juan Sanchez: New Media Video Installation: Three Portraits , 4 March 2009 Juan Sánchez: Unknown Boricuas + Prisoner: Abu Ghraib, at Lorenzo Homar Gallery, Taller Puertorriqueño, Philadelphia, PA, 2010Repeating Islands, "Juan Sanchez at the Lorenzo Homar Gallery in Philadelphia," 24 February 2010 Juan Sánchez, ¿What’s The Meaning of This?, BRIC House Gallery, Center for Puerto Rican Studies, New York, NY, 2015
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