Wifredo Lam

WIFREDO LAM (Cuba,1902-Paris, 1982).
Untitled.
Lithograph, copy 52/99.
Signed and justified by hand.
Measurements: 75,5 x 55 cm; 91 x 70 cm (frame).

Cuban avant-garde painter. In 1916 his family moved to Havana, where he studied at the School of Fine Arts. In 1923, Lam moved to Madrid, where he studied in the workshop of Fernando Alvarez de Sotomayor, director of the Prado Museum. In the 1930s the surrealist influence was evident in Lam's work as well as that of Henri Matisse, and possibly Joaquín Torres-García. In 1938, he went to live in Paris, where Picasso took him under his wing and nurtured his interest in African art and primitivist masks. That same year, he traveled to Mexico where he stayed with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Lam's varied multicultural heritage manifests itself extensively in his work. During World War II, Lam lived most of the time in the Caribbean, along with Claude Lévi-Strauss, André Masson, and André Breton. Between 1942 and 1950 he held regular exhibitions at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. In 1946, after a four-month stay in Haiti, Lam returned to France via New York. In 1948 he met Asger Jorn, with whom he became friends for many years. In 1964 he received the Guggenheim International Award, and in 1966 and 1967 numerous retrospectives of his work were held at the Kunsthalle in Basel, the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hannover, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. He received numerous awards and recognitions. His works can be found in major museums around the world. In this composition Lam's own style is fully manifested, a peculiar combination of surrealism and Caribbean spirituality.