Juan Sanchez

Who is Juan Sanchez?

Juan Sánchez -- also Juan Sanchez -- is an influential American artist and one of the most important Nuyorican cultural figures to emerge in the second half of the 20th century. Born to Puerto Rican parents in Brooklyn, New York, his works include photography, paintings and mixed media works. 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. He is part of a generation of artists—such as Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Pepón Osorio and Papo Colo—who in the 1980s and '90s 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."

Sánchez is a professor of painting, photography and combined media at Hunter College in New York City.