Juan Sánchez Peláez was born in Altagracia de Orituco but his family soon moved to Caracas, where he attended primary and secondary schools. He attended university in Santiago, Chile where he befriended the poets of the surrealist group Mandrágora. He published his first poems in their magazine and it was through this encounter that his lifelong interest in surrealism began. Upon returning to Caracas, he published Elena y los elementos in 1951. Elena y los elementos had a profound effect on Venezuelan poetry, outlining a distinctly Venezuelan form of surrealism that influenced the generation of avant-garde poets who emerged in the 1960s. This book was published in a fiftieth anniversary edition by Monte Ávila Editores after he was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Universidad de los Andes in Mérida in 2001. He worked as a teacher in Maturín, Maracaibo and the state of Sucre. He was cultural attache to the Embassy of Venezuela in Colombia. He also lived in Paris and Madrid. In 1969 he was a Fellow at The University of Iowa's International Writing Program, after which he lived in New York City for two years. Sánchez Peláez was a contributor to numerous periodicals: Papel Literario, Zona Franca, Eco Revista Poesia, Señal, Tabla Redonda, among others. He also translated the works of American poet laureateMark Strand from English to Spanish. The outstanding feature of his poetry is the tension between mysticism and eroticism. Sánchez Peláez always looked at his erotic objects as distant entities, separate from the mundane through the metaphysical veil. Ludovico Silva, in his "Juan Sanchez Pelaez, The real and illusionary" states:
Juan Sánchez Peláez was the first Venezuelan poet who introduced into our poetry, consciousness of the secrecy of man in the world and his distressing certainty of being thrown into time as a foreigner, without his consent His existential rebellion is a discerning attitude, a lyrical excitement, a ritual of introspection. Silent. He accepts the world but does not understand it and his flexible language, capable of expressing nuances of a visionary and deeply artistic sensibility, constitutes a renewal.
File:Juan Sánchez Peláez in Venezuela.jpg|thumb|Juan Sánchez Peláez in the Alta Mira neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela. Photo by Juan Liscano, in his Panorama de la Literatura actual, 1973, states: "Sánchez Peláez through his open writing and his existential attitude created a new path in our poetry." Pelaez was the father of two daughters, Tamar Meisel and Raquel Sanchez. His former wife Ellen Lapidus Stern, his daughters and his grandchildren live in Israel. He later married Malena Coelho who currently lives in Argentina.
Works
Elena y los elementos, Caracas, Tipografía Garrido, 1951, 46 pages.
Animal de costumbre, Editorial Suma, 1959, 30 pages.
Filiación oscura, Caracas, Editorial Arte, 1966, 41 pages.
Un día sea, Caracas, Monte Ávila Editores, 1969, 142 pages.
Rasgos comunes, Caracas, Monte Ávila Editores, 1975, 72 pages.
Por cuál causa o nostalgia, Caracas, Fondo Editorial Fundarte, 1981, 69 pages.
Aire sobre el aire, Caracas, Tierra de Gracia Editores, 1989, 35 pages.
Obra poética, Barcelona, Editorial Lumen, 2004, 260 pages.
