Wilfredo Lam

WILFREDO LAM (Sagua La Grande, Cuba, 1902 - Paris, 1982).
"Avila", 1932.
Oil on canvas.
Work reproduced in LAURIN-LAM, Lou: Catalogue Raisonné of the Painted Work Volume I 1923-1960. Acatos, 1996. P. 234. Cat. 32.04. B/W rep.
Signed, dedicated "to my good friend Dr. Cordero" and dated in the upper right area.
Measurements: 70 x 90 cm; 100 x 118 cm (frame).
Long before Lam achieved international recognition for the complex Afro-Cuban and surrealist syntheses that would define his maturity, this work testifies to a moment of formation and search in which he was still in intense dialogue with the Spanish pictorial tradition and with certain European symbolist and expressionist sensibilities. Far from the tropical exuberance and hybrid figures that would later make his language famous, "Avila" is presented as a severe and monumental vision of the Castilian landscape, conceived from a deeply personal point of view.
This painting belongs to a decisive period in Wifredo Lam's life. Initially trained in Havana, the artist moved to Spain in 1923 thanks to a scholarship, settling in Madrid and coming into contact with the intellectual and artistic environment of the time. During those years he studied both the classical Spanish tradition, particularly Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Goya, and the modern avant-gardes that were beginning to transform the European panorama. Lam's Spanish decade was also marked by painful personal experiences, including the loss of his wife and son, events that intensified the introspective and dramatic tone of many works of this period. The choice of Avila as a motif does not seem coincidental. The Castilian city, historically associated with mysticism, religious recollection and a deeply rooted medieval memory, offered Lam an ideal setting to explore a painting charged with spiritual density.

The scene depicts the famous medieval walls of the city of Avila, dominated by the imposing architecture of the cathedral rising above the horizon. However, Lam does not approach the motif from a topographical or documentary perspective. The artist transforms the city into an almost metaphysical presence. The stone fortifications, built with a thick, fragmented brushstroke, acquire a sculptural density that turns the architecture into a living, silent organism. The wall seems to emerge from the earth with an ancestral gravity, while the small houses in the foreground accentuate, by contrast, the monumental and almost oppressive dimension of the whole.
The atmospheric quality of the work stands out for its quality. The sky, worked with greenish, grayish and bluish tones, introduces an emotional tension that permeates the entire composition. There is no festive luminosity or picturesque idealization; the landscape appears enveloped in an unsettling, almost spiritual calm. This ability to transform an urban setting into a psychological experience reveals Lam's sensitivity to modern European trends, especially to certain echoes of expressionism and late symbolism.
Seen from the perspective of the artist's later career, this work is of great interest because it allows us to observe a moment of transition. Although the Afro-Cuban imagery that would define later masterpieces such as La Jungla does not yet appear, there is a tendency to convert visible reality into a symbolic and emotional experience. The work thus reveals itself as a fundamental testimony of the artist's years of apprenticeship and maturation. Spanish tradition, modern European sensibility and an early inclination towards the enigmatic and the spiritual converge in it.