Date of Award
Spring 5-1-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Art & Art History
First Advisor
Gaudêncio Fidelis
Second Advisor
Lynda Klich
Academic Program Adviser
Lynda Klich
Abstract
This thesis examines the culturally specific visual language within the work of Zilia Sánchez through an analysis of her biography and semiotic strategies, arguing that meaning in her work emerges through the materiality of form, rather than through conventional stylistic categorization. It reconsiders how art-historical movements are used to organize artists, proposing a framework better suited to Sánchez’s practice. The issues of reception and legibility have shaped Sánchez’s career as an exile whose experience of displacement informed her shaped canvases. These works articulated a simultaneously unique and universal sense of experience. In researching Sánchez’s history, an alternative story for the development of her Topologías Eróticas (Erotic Topologies) emerges that contributes to the legibility of works from Latin America against the grain of canonical frameworks.
Recommended Citation
Srnka, Sydney, "HUMANIST ABSTRACTIONS: ZILIA SÁNCHEZ’S FORMS OF SYMBOLISM AND THE REFRAMING OF THE PICTURE PLANE" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/1507
Included in
Contemporary Art Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Latin American Languages and Societies Commons, Latin American Literature Commons, Modern Art and Architecture Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons
