Emilio Sanchez (1921–1999) was an American artist known for his architectural paintings and graphic lithographs. His work is found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York NY), Museum of Modern Art (New York NY), National Gallery of Art (Washington DC), Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington DC), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana (Havana, Cuba), Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (Bogotá, Colombia), La Tertulia Museum (Cali, Colombia), and the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, Australia). A representational artist with a modernist and at times abstract approach, Sanchez emphasized "pattern, color and strong lighting contrasts". By 1970 architectural themes, from detailed stained glass windows to abstracted storefronts or city skylines, dominated his oeuvre. Carol Damian of the Frost Art Museum (Miami, FL) described his work as studies in "horizontals and verticals, bold stripes of color, and the ever-present shadows, especially diagonal shadows that he so favored, with darks and lights in repetition." For her, Sanchez's work was "not a picture of something, but the application of pigment onto a flat surface to become a singular object to its own definition." Early life Emilio Sánchez Fonts was born in Camagüey, Cuba, in 1921 to Estrella Fonts and Emilio Sánchez. The grandson of sugar entrepreneur Bernabé Sánchez Adan and a member of one of Cuba's oldest and wealthiest families, Sanchez's early life was one of privilege. As a child he was tutored at home on his father's sugar plantation in central Cuba where he was encouraged to draw by his grandmother. He traveled extensively throughout Europe and North and South America and as a youth attended the American boarding schools Ransom Everglades School, Fessenden School and, from 1935–39, The Choate School, now Choate Rosemary Hall. After his parents divorced, his mother married Peruvian artist Felipe Cossío del Pomar in 1938 and moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Sanchez then divided his time between Mexico, his father's Cuban estate, and American schools. He attended Yale University and, from 1941–1943, the University of Virginia. Encouraged to pursue art by Cossío del Pomar, in 1944 Sanchez moved to New York City to attend the Art Students League. Later, he attended Columbia University School of the Arts where he studied watercolor painting under Dong Kingman. During the late 1940s, he developed an interest in Mexican colonial architecture as well as Pre-Columbian Art and illustrated two books on Peruvian Art written