Peruvian sculptor, born in 1934 in Ayacucho (Peru), died on 9 April 2020. Based in Paris from 1965.
Life
Fabián Sánchez studied painting at the National School of Fine Arts in Lima and, from 1960 to 1968, took part in painting exhibitions in Peru and abroad. He settled in Paris in 1965 and worked there until the end of his life.
In 1969 he abandoned the flat surface for three-dimensional works in wood, polyester and metal. A self-taught sculptor, he devoted himself to the study of morphological structures and the construction of automata. From 1971 his animated works were shown in exhibitions devoted to art and technology, Surrealist art and contemporary sculpture. He was honoured by the Académie des beaux-arts.
The work
It all began with a salvaged sewing machine: from sewing-machine parts, Sánchez built anthropomorphic forms driven by a “plastic-mechanical animation”. The object recalls the chance meeting of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table, Lautréamont’s image which the Surrealists had made a watchword.
“In every worn mechanism he sensed a story to tell. In every abandoned cog he perceived a beauty to reveal.” (Ludvina Sánchez, his daughter, 2024)
Exhibitions and collections
- Les Machines sentimentales, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Énergie et mouvement, Reims; Mécanic’Art, Annecy; Robots en liberté, CNIT, La Défense.
- FIAC, Grand Palais (1977, 1980, 1994); 4th Paris Biennale; 39th Venice Biennale; 4th Medellín Biennial.
- Amérique latine et surréalisme, Museum Bochum; Surrealism: Two Private Eyes, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
- Fabián Sánchez, Anthropomorphic Machines, posthumous exhibition, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, 6 December 2024 to 9 January 2025, third part of “At the Sources of Convulsive Beauty” (Paris surréaliste, with the Comité des galeries d’art and the Centre Pompidou), with Excelsior (c. 1977, animated sculpture, 158 x 53 x 80 cm) and Ingau Ingau (c. 1998, animated sound sculpture, 44 x 17 x 16 cm).
- The Subversion of Images, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, January to March 2025.