hand made 4 Photograph

Barcelona-born Romulo Sans’ diverse training took him from his home in Spain to the United States. Sans originally studied contemporary music and jazz at the Aula de Música Moderna in Barcelona. Highly influenced by his grandfather, surrealist painter Juame Sans, he turned to the plastic arts under his then-mentor Isiah Zagar, spending his late teens building painstakingly detailed mosaics on the streets of Philadelphia, before studying graphic design at City College in San Francisco and finally, History of Fashion at FIT in New York, which he made his home for eight years as he ascended the global high fashion ranks. In 1993, Sans opened SANS NY, an accessory boutique in Soho, and launched Sansmedia, an advertising agency for young, edgy labels on the rise in New York’s fashion scene. Sans attained international notoriety collaborating as a stylist and art director for high end publications like Details, Vogue Man, and Vogue France, whose art director Donald Schaider said of him: “Sans is a very rare and lethal combination of extraordinary artist with the camera and hot blooded adventurer with a ferocious appetite for life and beauty.” His collaborations with photographers including David Bailey, Mathias Vriens, and Alberto Figueroa have been widely published, in GEO Magazine, GQ, Colors Magazine, CNBC Business Magazine, Havana Journal, BBC, The New York TImes, Bouygues, and Bettiment Magazine, among others. Despite his success, Sans’ immersion in this industry motivated his de-attachment from fashion and return to art. Relocating to Havana, Cuba, Sans spent ten years refining his aesthetic, merging his clean, fashion-trained eye with his bourgeoning commitment to cultural critique through artistic expression. Sans launched during this time, his controversial publication The H Magazine, Cuba’s first lifestyle magazine about the real Havana, a city that constantly outwits and reinterprets the limits placed on it by political authorities. James Brown, founder and editor of GQ Magazine has said of Sans’ The H Magazine that it “is probably the best and most stylish city guide in the world.” Sans’ daring attempt to capture Havana’s true zeitgeist came under fierce attack from Cuban authorities, resulting in Sans fleeing Cuba in 2009. Sans currently maintains his ties with Cuba from a distance, serving as Professor of Art Direction at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television de San Antonio.