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Sunny Stamps for the Summer
Artwork Title: Los Toldos
Artist: Emilio Sánchez
1973 , color lithograph on paper. UMMA, 2011/2.119
Triple digits! June 10th would have been the 100th birthday of the Cuban-American artist Emilio Sánchez, who was known for his colorful, geometric paintings and prints of homes and storefronts. In honor of his centennial, the United States Postal Service is releasing a set of four postage stamps depicting details from his work. UMMA has original lithographic copies of two of these featured prints, which were among 80 pieces in a 2011 gift from the Emilio Sánchez Foundation. 

The piece above, Los Toldos (or The Awnings), is a 1973 lithograph. Like many of Sánchez's other works, it uses a bright color palette, and stark contrast between light and shadow. The USPS writes that the buildings in Sánchez's work “are not precise renderings but rather subjective interpretations of reality. Each work often depicts a single building. All extraneous details have been stripped away. . . Strong light and deep shadows play across each building’s facade, delineating and emphasizing its abstract geometry without ever obscuring its true character.”
Reflection Prompts:
  • Sánchez used printmaking methods that reproduced his works in multiples. These new stamp sets will reproduce his images in the millions, bringing his art into households across America. How do you feel about having access to a reproduction (albeit tiny!) of an artwork in your possession? 
  • In the print above, Sánchez depicts awnings, which protect rooms from overheating due to intense sunlight. What figurative “awnings” in your life are present to help protect you when things might get overwhelming?
Explore Emilio Sánchez stamps

These are Forever Stamps, meaning that they keep their value no matter how high stamp prices rise. Besides Los Toldos, the other pieces featured include Ty's Place, En el Souk, and Untitled (Ventanita entreabierta). See all four designs on the United States Postal Service website.
The Artist Behind the Artist

Check out this short video interview with Antonio Alcalá, an art director for the United States Postal Service. "There are few opportunities for a creative to know that something that you worked on will be seen in all 50 states," he says, "and get reproduced not in the thousands, but in the millions."
"A New Yorker From Canaguey"

In 2019, former UMMA curator Pam Reister wrote an article about Emilio Sánchez for the Michigan Quarterly Review. "Although Sánchez came of age as a painter in the 1950s, the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, he worked in an independent and unique mode virtually devoid of the expressionist idiom of the day," she writes. "His quiet, spare, oversized details of urban and rural architecture have more in common with close-up details created by Georgia O’Keeffe and Charles Sheeler than the expressive, action painters in New York."

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