Collecting Key West: The Works of Mario Sanchez
Mario Sanchez (1908-2005), a Key West native, is among this country’s finest and most-recognized folk artists. In hundreds of intricately painted wood carvings created in a lifelong labor of love, Sanchez has provided a better history of Key West in the first part of the 20th century than any annals or academic texts.
His bas-relief carvings, or intaglios, are a visual feast filled with the music, smells and passion of Gato’s Village, the Cuban-American community of Key West where Sanchez spent much of his life. In the carvings, each person, chicken, dog and fish has its own singular expression, attitude and identity. Each represents an actual part of Sanchez’s personal experience.
The self-taught artist was born in Key West in 1908, the grandson of Cuban immigrants. As a child, Sanchez enjoyed carving, and as young man began carving fish out of pieces of driftwood, which he sold for $1.50. In the 1940s, at the urging of his mother-in-law, he began creating more complicated scenes depicting life in Key West as he remembered them from his childhood.
During his more than 70-year career, Sanchez developed his own style while mastering more traditional skills such as bas-relief carving and perspective. Working in cedar wood and white pine, the artist first sketched the scene onto a paper bag, and then used carbon paper to transfer the image to the wooden canvas. He then whittled the wood to create a low bas-relief, leaving the original sketch behind. Materials such as house paint, clean kitty litter (to provide texture for the streets), and egg yolks and Elmer’s glue (to make the windows shiny) were applied to the carved wood, bringing his artwork to life.
Sanchez’s first major public showing was in 1961 at the Fort East Martello Museum. This exhibition served to enrich his reputation as a well-respected artist and member of the Key West Cuban-American community.
Of his work, Sanchez adopted as his motto: ‘Se que mi modesto arte no es bueno, pero gusta,’ or ‘I know my modest art isn’t good, but it pleases.’
