Zilia Sánchez Domínguez

Zilia Sánchez Domínguez (12 July 1926 – 18 December 2024) was a Cuban-born, Puerto Rico-based abstract painter, sculptor, and arts educator. She started her career as a set designer for theatre groups in Cuba before the Cuban Revolution, eventually moving to New York to work as an abstract painter. She moved again to San Juan in 1971, living there for the remainder of her life and career. Sánchez Domínguez blurred 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.

Early life and education Zilia Sánchez Domínguez was born on 12 July 1926, in Havana, Cuba, to a Spanish father and a Cuban mother. Sánchez Domínguez enrolled at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro in Havana, one of Cuba's most prestigious art schools.

Sánchez Domínguez became widely known in Cuba during her early career as an artist in the 1950s.

She did not find much success in New York, struggling to find galleries that would accept her work for exhibition,

1970s-2000s: Puerto Rico, isolation from art world In 1971 Sánchez Domínguez left New York to live in Puerto Rico permanently.

Her work was included in the group exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-85 at the Hammer Museum in 2017, placing her in the context of well-known Latin American artists and introducing her to another, broader audience; After closing at The Phillips, the exhibition traveled to the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico and El Museo del Barrio in New York. Washington City Paper, Hyperallergic, Art in America, frieze, The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, and The New York Times. In 2023, her work was included in the group exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.

In 2024, Sánchez Domínguez participated in the 60th Venice Biennale, her second time exhibiting at the Biennale. Her death was announced by her art dealer, Galerie Lelong & Co, along with the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico.

Exhibitions 1957 – Exposición de pinturas: Zilia Sánchez, Galería Clan, Madrid. 1958 – Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana. 1970 – Estructuras en secuencia, Museo de Historia, Arqueología y Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico, San Juan. 2013 – Artists Space, New York City. 2014 – Zilia Sánchez: Heróicas eróticas en Nueva York, Galerie Lelong, New York. 2017 – 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, VIVA ARTE VIVA. 2019 – Soy Isla (I Am an Island), The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Notes, citations, and references