Gabriel Sanchez paints his young Cuban friends making their way through troubled times

Gabriel Sanchez | Ray Mark Rinaldi, The Denver Post
"Human Rights Watch, the international nonprofit organization that monitors the way governments treat their citizens around the globe, sums up the current situation in Cuba in acute terms.
 
'The government continues to repress and punish virtually all forms of dissent and public criticism, as Cubans endure a dire economic crisis affecting their rights,' states the opening line of HRW’s 2023 World Report.
 
It is within this context of national trauma that Gabriel Sanchez paints people, his friends and acquaintances in Havana and other places, many of them social outsiders who make their way through these troubled days. They are young people mostly, in their 20s or 30s, an age of dreams and ambitions.
 
In the 14 oil paintings presented in the exhibition “They Devoured Everything” at David B. Smith Gallery, they come off as solitary figures, even the ones depicted as couples. They float in pale worlds, pensive, waiting, quiet yet determined, sometimes gazing directly at the viewer,  as if trying to send some silent message to the world through the medium of the painter for whom they are posing."
 
 

 

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2023年4月3日