Las Cabañas (The Cabins)

Emilio Sánchez’s studies of architecture from the 1960s and 1970s pay homage to Cuban culture and modernity. These works explore the effects of light and shadow on color, simplifying structural elements through the abstraction of geometric form. Sánchez settled in New York in 1944, but Cuba remained a constant point of reference, exemplified in his architectural renderings of houses and storefronts. Like many of his works from the 1970s, Las cabanas probes the perceptual experience of light and color. The work is structured through horizontal registers: pale-blue sky, yellow cabanas with bright-green trim, sand-colored walkway. Lacking any human presence, the image projects the emptiness and mystery of architectural space alone, glimpsed through the geometry and shadows of partially open doors and windows.

Text credit: Produced in collaboration with the University of Maryland Department of Art History & Archaeology and by Gemma Kim