One of the most famous Cuban artists, Tomas Sánchez, was born on May 22, 1948 in the small town of Aguada de Pasajeros, in the province of Cienfuegos, Cuba. His family was engaged in the sugar trade, and was very far from art, Tomas’ mother encouraged him to try himself in art, seeing in him the inclinations for painting. At the age of 16, Tomas moved to Havana and entered the National Academy of Arts. Real success came to him after winning the prestigious Joan Miró Prize in 1980 (an annual international Catalan award in the field of contemporary art, winners receive an impressive cash prize and an honorary statuette).

Tomas Sanchez is a multifaceted artist, in his creative work he experimented with engravings, sculptures and photographs, but he received the greatest recognition as a painter. In his works he uses a whole range of media: watercolor, pastel, ink, acrylic, tempera, but pays the greatest attention to oil painting.

The artist’s most famous works are impressive-sized landscapes with endless forests. The paintings radiate calm and serenity, looking at them you can hear the sound of a river smoothly flowing away beyond the horizon and a light rustle of leaves in the treetops. In his works, Sanchez reflects the lost paradise of mankind, touching upon important environmental issues of our time. The artist pays special attention to the elaboration of the smallest details in his works, for example, the huge landscape Orilla En La Noche Clara depicts a dense forest immersed in twilight, Thomas painted the picture so that each leaf received its portion of silvery moonlight.

As the Cuban artist admits, he has always had two main interests in life: art and meditation, which are closely related. Thomas uses landscapes in his oil paintings that reflect his entire rich inner world and the feelings he experiences during meditation; in a state of complete harmony, beautiful forests and endless rivers are born from under his brush; inner experiences and anxieties are reflected in the form of famous landscape works with mountains of garbage in landfills.