Zilia Sánchez was a Cuban-born artist known for her distinctive, hybrid, sculptural paintings that explore themes of femininity, eroticism, and abstraction. Her innovative work is characterized by stretched canvases that curve and bulge into three-dimensional forms, creating sensual, minimalist compositions. Educated in Havana, she traveled to Europe and later New York, where she was influenced by the postwar abstraction and modernist architecture of the 1950s.

She eventually settled in Puerto Rico, where she continued to refine her unique visual language, engaging the formal concerns of geometry, space, and surface. Her work, often featuring soft, curving forms, evokes a sense of intimacy and quiet strength and reflects a deeply personal exploration of identity, desire, and the body.