Álvaro Sánchez, a Guatemala City collage artist, draws from his vibrant, chaotic hometown to create raw, human-centered art. Influenced by Dadaists and punk, his work blends vintage images and bold colors to explore life’s fragility and mysteries.
1. Let’s kick things off: Who is Álvaro Sánchez? Tell us about your roots in Guatemala City, how you first got tangled up in the world of collages, and what’s kept you hooked on this art form over the years.
I was born, raised, and still live in Guatemala City. It’s where my roots are. It’s a wildly contradictory city in many ways. Horrible and beautiful at the same time. I love it and hate it, but I love wandering its streets. In retrospect, I think that’s what made me unwittingly gravitate toward college. This city is a vast collage of thousands of things. It has no pauses or breaks; you go from one thing to something completely different in the blink of an eye. And in the other hand, I think what kept me hooked on this art form was, first and foremost, having discovered the European avant-garde movements, where collage was the primary artistic resource. Such as Dadaism, for example. Then, over the years, I continued to appreciate the playful, yet anarchic element of collage. This ability to talk about many things using elements that have nothing to do with each other. The possibilities are endless.
2. You’ve lived and worked in Guatemala’s capital—a place with a raw, vibrant heartbeat. How has this city, its streets, and its people shaped the stories you tell through your art, then and now?
As I mentioned in the previous question, this city gives you no time to breathe sometimes. Everything is loud and colorful. The sounds and smells explode into your being, and I love that because it makes it unique. And every corner has a story to tell. I’ve always said that if you don’t find ideas or stories to tell in this city, you’re definitely dead in your own life. That has definitely shaped my work. That is, how I tell stories about my home country without falling into the clichés that sometimes entail. To see Guatemala City in a different way, without falling into a tourist postcard. That’s not my Guatemala; the Guatemala I want you to see is the one in my work. Sometimes it’s beautiful, and other times not so much.
3. Your collages always put humans front and center—fragile, mortal, exposed. What draws you to peel back the layers of humanity like this, and has that pull changed as you’ve grown as an artist?
I think I’ve always been obsessed, first and foremost, with how the human body works. I think it’s a perfect machine, a beautiful, almost miraculous piece of architecture. But on the other hand, I’m deeply moved by the human condition. I like to delve into the depths of what dwells in the human mind and heart. I find it fascinating because it’s in those dark places that the most honest parts of humankind are hidden—their true essence, free of masks. As terrifying as it can sometimes be, I still believe that those less luminous parts contain a special beauty. And I’d like to believe that this constant investigation is what has made me grow as a human being and as an artist.
4. You’ve worn many hats: collage artist, graphic designer, music writer. How do these parts of you collide—or coexist—and which one feels closest to your core today?
As a self-taught artist, I think all these forms of expression act as a single force. It always gives me something to inspire me. I worked for 28 years as a graphic designer in the advertising world, and I think that gave me a sense of color, composition, but above all, the ability to develop a concept and have more grounded ideas. With literature, I think that before calling myself an artist, I consider myself a reader. Books, as well as music, have provided me with tons of images and atmospheres that serve to nourish everything I do. But what I feel closest to will always be painting. Because I feel it’s where I manage to condense all the ideas that come from other art forms.
5. Skulls, skeletons, x-rays, guts—your work has a dark, poetic edge. What’s the deepest or most unsettling truth about life you’ve uncovered while digging into these symbols?
All of these symbols have helped me meditate a lot on my own mortality. I think about death every day in different ways. But I don’t want what I’m saying to be misinterpreted as something morbid or bad. On the contrary, I’ve never necessarily seen these references as bad things. I see them as elements to continue asking myself questions. About my place here, about what I’m supposed to do, about the time I have left. And using all of that is the only way I can ask myself those questions daily. I think those questions should be to the point, forceful, and straightforward. People are still afraid of all of that; it’s normal; we don’t know what lies beyond this. But I think we shouldn’t be afraid; I think we should be more curious and understand it differently.
6. You’ve blended vintage photos, anatomical sketches, religious icons, and punk chaos with your own drawings. How do you wrestle all these pieces into a single collage, and when do you know it’s time to step back?
I don’t think I can rationalize it, because it’s always instinctive. This might sound strange, but I think the elements speak to you; they ask you how they want to be configured. I don’t know; I only know that sometimes it’s the image, other times it’s the color palette, and in the blank space, everything begins to fit together. Many times, I realize the result until the piece is finished, and the first thing that comes to mind is how the hell I achieved that. I suppose that years of perfecting the technique and trying to absorb everything that interests me also make it easier to work in an instinctive form. The artwork in the end is what decides for me which way to go.
7. Your palette—black, white, grays, with those fiery red and orange sparks—feels like a signature. Why these colors? What do they scream that a softer palette couldn’t whisper?
I think an artist should make the art that best suits their temperament and also their palette. It happened to me when I discovered the work of the Spanish Informalists, the work of artists like Tapiés, or the work of Saura, in contrast to the work of the American Abstract Expressionists and the artists of the Cobra movement. I was moved by the power of the gesture, the power of red, and the abysmal depth of black. I think that color palette defines my personality perfectly. I need that intensity in the studio to work. Only then make sense to me. I hope that that will become my personal signature over time.
8. Heavy music’s been a big influence—think black metal and its death-soaked vibes. What’s one track or band that’s haunted your work the most, and how does it echo in what you create?
Enjoying music was one of the best things that could have happened to me. My relationship with music is very peculiar. For some reason, back in the 80s and 90s in Guatemala, you could find a lot of heavy metal. How did those tapes of that type of music come to me? I don’t remember, but it was wonderful. You can imagine seeing the cover of Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” or the cover of Venom’s “Welcome to Hell” when I was 8 or 9 years old. That blew my mind. It scared me, but at the same time, I felt irresistibly drawn to it. Curiosity won out. I found a safe place in music.
I could never have imagined that music, those bands, would help me deal with the difficult years of my youth. For example, the exhibition I recently had in Warsaw in October 2024 had a title that referenced a Misfits song. And when I think about which bands changed my life, I can tell you there were four, of course, at different times in my life. Bands like Nine Inch Nails, Joy Division, and The Smiths made me see music beyond music. A religious experience, to put it another way.
9. Dadaists like Kurt Schwitters, punk’s DIY rebellion, and abstract giants like Basquiat have inspired you. How do you take these wild spirits and twist them into something that’s unmistakably Álvaro Sánchez?
I love that you refer to them as wild spirits, because that’s exactly what they continue to be. I think that in discovering much of what you mention, my way of assimilating it better was trying to understand the elements that made each movement or each artist who impacted me special. That is, from the Dadaists, trying to understand the reason for their rebellion; from the Punk movement, understanding that if you don’t do it yourself, no one will do it for you; and from other painters, understanding how they understood the white space and then how they attacked it. But the challenge was how to translate that to my Guatemalan context without falling into just another copy. I think what worked for me was that, no matter what, I had to maintain a certain universality in what I´m saying with my work. I believe that in all those elements and ideas lies the imprint of the artist.
10. Your style’s shifted over time—raw and graphic years ago, more colorful and painterly in the early 2020s. What’s driving your art now in 2025, and where do you see it heading next?
I think part of an artist’s journey is letting themselves be surprised by what suddenly appears naturally in their work. Of course, that comes when you give yourself the opportunity to step outside your comfort zone. It’s exciting to occasionally pause and recap where the work is going. To see it from a broader perspective. I think it gives you an idea of where you stand in your body of work. I think collage will always be a constant, but I think the same collage right now is asking to mutate into painting, drawing, and object-making. This excites me because I’ve been painting and drawing much more than I have in other years. College always sneaks in, but in a more subtle way. In my mind, I have a vague idea of what I want to do in the next few years. I can see it. It’s just that I haven’t figured out the route to get there yet, but I’m sure I’ll get there.
11. You’ve juggled commercial projects—book covers, posters, illustrations—with your personal creations. Does the commercial grind ever clash with your artistic soul, or has it sharpened it in ways you didn’t expect?
I can tell you it went both ways. On one hand, the advertising side of things was slowly killing me. It wasn’t until I was able to dedicate myself 100% to my art that things changed. By that, I mean that now I can choose which projects to do and, above all, enjoy them. For example, designing book covers and posters is something I really like, but it’s because I really want to do the project; I don’t have to do it anymore because I have no other option. That’s a luxury I can afford now. And I don’t do it as often now, and the reason is that my artistic work comes before everything else. I want to work on my ideas 100% as I conceived them. Honestly, I don’t want to make any kind of compromises with my work anymore. I think I’ve already paid for the right to do it my way.
12. Your collages feel spontaneous yet heavy with meaning. If one could talk, what would it say about the fleeting nature of life that someone might miss just looking at it?
The idea is always to have that kind of spontaneity, for the elements to look as if they’ve always been that way, but besides that, for me, it’s always necessary for them to have a twist, a catch, so that not everything is resolved in a single glance at the work. I hate it when work doesn’t have more layers, when they make it easy for me. I don’t like that, and it’s not what I’m looking for in art either. I believe your audience isn’t stupid and deserves you to give them something more in your work. You can’t underestimate this. I always say I see my work as a large corridor full of doors. I’m the one who has to open each one of them. And that’s exactly what I want my viewers to do. You never know what you might miss by not opening one of those doors. If you don’t feel that curiosity, you’ll surely miss out on something wonderful.
13. Literature, music, and film fuel your imagination. Name one specific work—a book, song, or movie—that’s left a permanent scar on your creativity, and how’s it shown up in your art?
I can’t live without those elements; my work simply doesn’t exist without them. And well, it’s a rather difficult question, but I think I can answer it.
A book that changed my life was WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE by Raymond Carver. The apparent simplicity of telling a story about everyday life for ordinary people, and how it can also contain horror and ambiguous endings that can be whatever you want. That was what impacted me about Carver, and I love his literary work. On the other hand, the film that had the greatest impact on me was LOST HIGHWAY by David Lynch. Lynch’s cinema and also his painting opened my mind to the fact that you can tell things in many ways, and that not everything has to be linear and obvious. And one song that continues and will continue to resonate in my life is “THERE’S A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT” by The Smiths. For me, that song encapsulates a lovely feeling of melancholy and escape, but also the beauty of failure when everything ends suddenly.
14. Your work’s traveled the world—Italy, France, the US, Guatemala, and beyond. What’s the most surprising thing someone’s said or felt about your collages, and did it make you see them differently?
When work transcends your borders, there’s always a feeling of terror. Because you’re terrified of not knowing how someone totally different from you, culturally speaking, will assimilate it. Of course, that’s always beyond your control. In my case, it’s almost always been a fairly positive reception. Someone once told me that, looking at my work, they somehow perceived and understood the place I come from. And I think that brings me back to what I was saying about that element of universality I try to maintain in my work, so that it becomes a bridge to other people and connects with them.
15. Let’s push the edge: what’s the riskiest or most personal idea you’ve ever stitched into a collage, and how did it feel to set it free for others to judge?
This answer is easy. There was a piece where I used photos of my parents and a few other things to tell their story, a story that didn’t end up as a fairy tale, quite the opposite. The piece brought tears to my eyes when I made it, and I don’t know if it was because of how strongly I felt about it or because of the wine glasses I drank that night. For some reason, I decided to display it in a collective show. Of course, I had no intention of selling it. But a very good friend of mine, who was one of my first collectors, insisted so strongly that she wanted to buy it, I somehow ended up selling it to her. I asked her why she wanted it, and she told me she loved the feeling of melancholy it conveyed, that it was like a sad story she liked to read. I had never told her my parents’ story, but I was sure the piece conveyed that. Months later, I visited her and had dinner with her and her partner at the time. And I saw the painting hanging in that living room, seeing my parents’ faces hanging there like strangers in a house that was foreign to them was weird, but seeing them like that made me feel at peace with the piece because the work simply took on another context, a happier one, I think.
16. When you look back on your journey, what’s the toughest lesson art’s taught you—about yourself, your craft, or the world—and how’s it changed the way you cut and paste today?
Wow, when I think about these 25 years of doing this—and I know 25 years sounds short, but it also sounds like a lot—I reflect that it’s been a long journey, one that, of course, I don’t want to ever end, as if that were possible. I think the hardest lesson, or at least the one that art has taught me very well. Is that the path of art a lonely path? A path where I believe you must first learn to enjoy your own company. Because, at least for me, it’s a very intimate process. The life of an artist is peculiar. It can’t be governed by the normal parameters of a common, everyday society. At least not for me. My path has been a very solitary one, but I like it that way because I enjoy it so, so much. And it’s something I was willing to do from the beginning. I think I understood that art can be a very jealous lover. It wants you all for itself and no one else. I accepted it, and to this day, I promise you, I’ve had absolutely no doubts. I’ve doubted other things in my life, but never art.
17. Picture this: it’s decades from now, and someone in Guatemala City digs up one of your collages. What do you hope they’d feel about Álvaro Sánchez—not just the artist, but the man who made sense of life’s mess through paper and ink?
I have to say it’s a very beautiful question that’s very difficult to answer without falling into pretensions. I think only time can give you some kind of answer to that mystery. I’d like to think that when people think of college in Guatemala, and perhaps around the world, my work and my name might figure, especially in my country, where college is somehow ignored. I’d like them to think of Alvaro Sánchez as this artist who loved the chaos and mysteries of life and who somehow tried to make sense of it by reconfiguring images, hoping those images would give him an answer, or at least help him formulate better questions. Whoever sees these collages should say something like, “I hope that wherever he is now, he’s found the answers he’s been searching for, and if he hasn’t yet, I hope that in that other life he’ll still have a scissor in his hand to continue solving that great mystery the way he liked: by cutting things.” That’s what I wish.
