Raquel Sanchez was born in Paris, France (on US soil) in the early 1960’s. This was a unique period for artists and their families. In her early years she would call many places home, yet one constant was the artists flowing through her environs and travels. The countless schools of her youth were mainly science and art oriented. She grew up against the backdrop of languages and cultures, surrounded by writers and artists in places ranging from New York to Ibiza, Morocco to Venezuela and the list goes on. While living in Ibiza, her classmates were children of renowned movie actors and stars. Raquel was influenced by visiting artists such as the Irish singer and political activist Bob Geldof. While in elementary school in Essaouira, Morocco, Jimi Hendrix would accompany her and together they colored with Crayola crayons. During her younger years in the Spain of Franco’s regime she resided and was educated in international schools on an island, near the foreign service influence of her father, who resided on the mainland. Foreign influences were prohibited in Spanish schools under El Franco.

In 1981 she graduated from Edward R. Murrow High School in New York, renowned for its fine art education. Between classes and after school, she drew and painted in the school yard with Jean-Michel Basquiat. They would speak comfortably in French and Spanish as Sanchez taught and practiced one-line drawings with Basquiat. They considered one another “besties” as he attempted to recruit her to do graffiti in Brooklyn. Later on, Basquiat would try to convince Raquel to go to New York City to paint with him in his East Village groups. Rather than joining, she worked at Interview Magazine, at fashion hubs for the elite, and art galleries in the village where occasional visits with Keith Haring became part of her artistic transcript from which she draws.

While at Brooklyn College, Raquel spent time with the American poet Allen Ginsberg and corralled around his entourage of poets more freely than most due to Ginsberg’s friendship with her father, Juan Sanchez Pelaez, the renowned Venezuelan Poet.

Raquel Sanchez is a member of the Israel Association of Writers in English. She is a published poet, critiqued by the Canadian-American poet laureate Mark Strand. Strand occasionally would speak with her about translations and, through his friendship with her father, shared his thoughts with her and with Sanchez Pelaez as they critiqued her poetry. Her Tel Aviv experience in the early 1990’s made her life-long friends with elder talents who continue to influence her writing.

In the early 1990’s, after receiving her Master’s Degree from Yeshiva University, Sanchez founded The Rose Institute (which later became Crossroads) an organization working with at-risk English-speaking youth in Jerusalem. Following the successful establishment and growth of the organization, Sanchez returned to New York in 2001 where she became a PhD student at New York University. Raquel remained active as a writer with Slam groups and performed as a poet in a multitude of East Village, West Village and Uptown venues. In 2003, while still living in New York, Raquel rediscovered painting. Her paintings in New York were mostly an attempt at regaining inspiration following the death of her father and repolishing her skills in the plastic arts.

Sanchez moved to Israel in 2013 following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy which left her severely affected. In Jerusalem, where she fully devoted herself to painting, she blossomed. Following several exhibitions, in 2016 she began exhibiting at Rosenbach Contemporary, a Jerusalem contemporary art gallery dedicated to promoting contemporary Israeli Art.