Wifredo Lam

WIFREDO LAM (Sagua La Grande, Cuba, 1902 – Paris, 1982).
“The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship,” 1976.
Lithograph on paper, print no. 82/99.
Signed and inscribed in pencil.
Measurements: 76 x 55.5 cm.

Wifredo Lam trained in Havana, where he studied at the School of Fine Arts. He made his solo debut in the early 1920s with an exhibition at the Salon of the Association of Painters and Sculptors in the Cuban capital. In 1923, he moved to Madrid on a scholarship from the City Council of Sagua La Grande, where he continued his training in the studio of Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor, director of the Prado Museum and known for having been Salvador Dalí’s teacher. At the same time, he attended the Academia Libre del Pasaje de la Alhambra and visited the Prado, where his preferences leaned toward the works of Bosch, Brueghel, and Goya. Gradually, his painting took on a modern style that combined a geometric structure with a certain surrealist streak. In 1938, he traveled to Paris with a letter of recommendation for Picasso written by Manolo Hugué. Lam, who had had the opportunity to attend Picasso’s exhibition held in Madrid in 1936, described this experience as “a profound shock.” In 1939, he held his first solo exhibition in Paris, organized by Pierre Loeb. During World War II, Lam remained in the Caribbean, in contact with representatives of the avant-garde such as Masson and Breton, who, fascinated by the Cuban artist’s paintings, asked him to illustrate his poem “Fata Morgana” (1940). Upon his return to Cuba, Lam began an artistic practice rooted in the heritage of a people who, in the painter’s view, needed to reclaim their dignity. In this way, indigenous references merged with the formal language he had learned in Europe to produce works in which the figures of the Yoruba pantheon—who would come to populate much of his later work—already appeared. In the second half of the 1940s, Lam divided his time between Cuba, New York, and Paris, the latter of which he made his home in 1952. His international reputation grew steadily, and he held regular exhibitions at galleries such as the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. He traveled extensively during the following years and, in 1960, settled in Albisola Mare, on the Italian coast. In 1961, he received the International Guggenheim Award, and between 1966 and 1967, multiple retrospectives of his work were held at the Kunsthalle in Basel.