Sánchez, Juan, undated

Juan Sánchez (also Juan Sanchez) was born in July 1954 in Brooklyn, New York, and earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Cooper Union in New York (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.

Sánchez 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, El Museo del Barrio, the Smithsonian’s Museum of American Art, The National Museum of African American History & Culture and The National Portrait Gallery and the Mead Museum of Art. His awards include John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1988), Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship (1995), New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (2003), Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2001 and 2007), CUAA Augustus Saint–Gaudens Achievement in the Visual Art Award (2020 and has been inducted into the Cooper Union Hall of Fame.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Sanchez_(artist) / https://huntercollegeart.org/studio-art-faculty/juan-sanchez/