Though New York was a potent space of exploration for Sánchez, she was always considered an outsider and the kind of exclusion and alienation she faced further marginalized her and her work. She has only started to gain international attention in the last decade or so for her significant contribution to painting. She is, however, well-known and celebrated in Cuba (her home country) and Puerto Rico (where she is currently based). Sánchez’s first major U.S. museum solo exhibition, Zilia Sánchez: Soy La Isla (I Am an Island), was organized by The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., in 2019, which traveled to El Museo del Barrio, New York, and Museo de Arte Ponce, San Juan, Puerto Rico. The artist studied sculpture, painting and drawing at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes de San Alejandro in Havana, Cuba. When she moved to New York in 1964, she began studying at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. Her works are now being acquired by numerous institutional collections such as the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, among others.