BEFORE KEY WEST BECAME A DESTINATION for spring breakers ordering endless rounds of shots; before Duval Street was lined with $5 T-shirt shops and barkers hawking questionable cosmetics; and long before the half-naked, bead-grabbing, drunken hordes of Fantasy Fest invaded the island, Key West was inhabited by a vibrant community of exceptionally ambitious entrepreneurs, many of whom were Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe. There were German cigar makers, Eastern European tailors and peddlers of every nationality, all of whom contributed to the thriving Jewish community. Because of their own diaspora, the Jews of Key West had a natural affinity for the Cubans, who were fighting for their own cultural independence from Spain. In fact, dozens of local Jews collaborated with José Martà and his rebels, building lasting relationships between the Jewish and Cuban communities in Key West.
The book is a vivid and riveting dive into the dramatic history of South Florida’s oldest Jewish community. Illustrated with more than 100 archival images, the book brings to life a history that had, until Haskell’s deft storytelling, been largely forgotten. With Sanchez’s works as a backdrop, largely a result of Nance Frank’s sourcing efforts, Haskell’s book will came to life with great success.
Way before the Etsy era of celebrating the local artist, selling local art wasn’t trendy or cool or even necessarily profitable.
Thank goodness Nance Frank, owner of the Gallery on Greene, values being fascinating and well-traveled over being cool, or else much of Key West’s historical art would have been lost to the annals of memory.
Born and raised in Key West, Frank attended the University of Florida and “left to roam the planet,” as she tells it, returning to Key West more than 25 years ago. While she was away, she worked as a curator in museums in Switzerland and Chile, honing her love and passion for art in all its incarnations.
When she came back to Key West, Nance Lura, Mickey Gorman and Mark Barrack opened the Gallery on Greene and hired Frank in 1997 as their second director.
“A year after they opened, they were less interested in the gallery than LaTe- Da (which they also owned) and sold the Gallery on Greene to me,” Frank recounts.
Though she inherited a full-fledged island-oriented business, her vision extended far beyond the scope of her immediate surroundings. She immediately began to source art from Cuba and now organizes and leads monthly Cuban art tours that afford participants the opportunity to collect art, converse with Cuban artists and experience all that Havana has to offer. When you consider that the United States and Cuba were virtually inaccessible to one another for 50-plus years, the idea that Frank has been able to expose each country’s artists to one another is nothing short of tremendous.
Perhaps the most lasting mark she has imprinted on Key West’s art history is her passion for self-taught Cuban-American folk artist Mario Sanchez, who has been called the most important 20th century artist of his kind and who is from the very same Key West neighborhood Frank explored as a child.
Along with organizing and overseeing Sanchez’s major solo museum exhibitions in New York in 2005 and Havana in 2015, Frank, a member of B’Nai Zion, also worked tirelessly on behalf of the Sanchez’s disciples Andy Thurber, Wayne Garcia, Papito Suarez and George Garcia to bring Sanchez’s philosophy of “One Race, the Human Race” and the autochthonous culture of Key West to the world. Although Sanchez died in 2005, his works are still featured prominently at the Gallery on Greene and Frank continues to champion his life and his art.
The bulk of Sanchez’s pieces are bas relief wood intaglios, typically depicting vibrantly colored scenes of everyday life in Key West and rendering immortal the Cuban cultural heritage of Key West in the early 20th century. He broached a number of similar themes across his pieces, including depicting cigar factories, houses of worship, children playing together and visual and verbal puns.
The artist was custodian and curator of his oeuvre; the studio under the trees was a venue for experimentation; the objectness of things and variations on a single subject or form were his trademarks. Through his wholly individual approach to the creative process (the intaglio work and painted, carved wood), he upended traditional notions of the artist and in so doing, he extended the limits of what was possible in the realm of folk art.
Last year the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, which includes the chief justice of the Supreme Court and the vice president of the United States, recognized Sanchez’s particular brand of genius and approved his art for the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.
Chief Curator Virginia Mecklenburg of The Smithsonian American Art Museum received a large Sanchez intaglio donated by the Edward B. and Joan T. Knight Foundation. Frank facilitated the donation.
“Mario Sanchez was the greatest storyteller of the everyday people of Key West,” Frank says. “Born in 1908 and having lived 96 years as a poet, a painter, an actor and a pitcher for the Key West All-Stars, he encompassed the time when Key West was becoming a special place where people celebrated diversity.”
While still a boy, Sanchez began his artistic career whittling small fish on Rest Beach. After his marriage to wife Rosa, his mother-in-law suggested a more radical aesthetic endeavor inspired by the charming people and architecture of Old Key West — telling the island’s history.
At first glance, Sanchez’s work is charming folk art. However, delve into his tableau of Key West, an island that has embraced diversity for 150 years, and it becomes dramatically complex.
The intaglio selected by the Smithsonian depicts Sanchez’s father reading to cigar makers at the Eduardo H. Gato Cigar Factory. The factory employed 500 people of every color. Men and women, Bahamian, Americans, Cuban, Chinese, Jews and Italians sit side by side. This diversity, and particularly the integration of the Jewish community, is precisely what the “Mario Sanchez: Jewish Friends & Conchtown Neighbors” exhibit seeks to put on display.
Bringing together more than a dozen intaglios and brown paper bag sketches from public and private collections, this exhibition is the first of its kind in any museum or gallery to embrace the connection between Sanchez and the ethnic citizens of Key West. It intends to enrich our knowledge of the personal and cultural conversation that sustained these two communities, Cuban and Jewish, for decades.
The exhibit has its official premiere on Feb. 28 at B’Nai Zion Synagogue (750 United St.), where a panel discussion will include Arlo Haskell and members of the Jewish families depicted in Sanchez’s intaglios and Haskell’s book.
Despite their remarkably different cultural trajectories and their seemingly divergent interests, Sanchez and his “Jewish Neighbors & Conchtown Friends” struck up a relationship that endured for his entire 96-year life. Some of those friends and neighbors were his best collectors.
Several of Sanchez’s celebrated and highly sculptural intaglios will be on display, such as “Old Island Days #44 (B’Nai Zion),” “Boza’s Comparsa” (the Aronowitz and Lewinski buildings) and “Appelrouth Lane” and “Old Island Days #23.” Those intaglios depict the Golden Era of the Wolkowsky, Wolfson and Markovitz stores — stores owned by highly successful Key West Jews.
Other Sanchez art featured in the exhibition include his early work titled “Good Old Key West Days” with John Raisin’s Cigar Factory, which was run by one of many Jewish cigar producers.
In all, 15 works Sanchez carved with Jewish friends and neighbors have been identified for the exhibit. They include “Colorful Solares Hill” (Weintraub’s Grocery), “Old Island Days,” “Heart of Duval,” “Old Key West,” “1918” (paper bag), “San Carlos Parade,” “A. Louis & Sons,” “Markovitz Racket Store” and “Hymie” (corner of Greene and Duval streets), along with two images of B’Nai Zion.
The full “Jewish Friends & Conchtown Neighbors” exhibit will will be on display at the B’Nai Zion on Feb. 28 and then at Gallery on Greene (606 Greene St.) March 9-14.
Frank keeps much of Sanchez’s work on display (and for sale) year-round at her Gallery on Greene.
For a deeper dive into Key West’s Jewish history, “The Jews of Key West” can be purchased at Salt Island Provisions and Books & Books at The Studios of Key West. ¦
Mario Sanchez is as much a part of Key West history as President Truman, Ernest Hemingway, Mel Fisher, Captain Tony, Sloppy Joe's Bar, the Sunset Festival and the Southernmost Point. Check out his artwork and maybe take a print home. Of course, when you're buying that home to hang Mario's artwork be sure to buy it from me.
Gary
