Wifredo Lam, Cuba

Born 1902, Sagua La Grande, Cuba - Died 1982, Paris Wifredo Lam studied at the San Alejandro Academy in Havana and at the San Fernando Academy in Madrid in 1923. In 1938 he went to Paris and met Picasso and the Surrealists. Lam exhibited in 1939 at the Galerie Pierre Loeb and worked in Picasso’s studio. He illustrated André Breton’s book Fata Morgana in 1940. In 1941 he sailed from Marseilles to Martinique with Andre Masson, André Breton, Claude Levi-strauss, Victor Braunner and others. He returned to Cuba in 1941 and developed a new awareness of Afro-Cuban traditions, as is reflected in his work of that period. During other Caribbean travels he became interested in vodou and incorporated its imagery into his paintings. In 1951 Lam returned to Paris, living there and in Italy. Lam’s work was included in the 1987-88 traveling exhibit, Art of Fantastic organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 1992 was a particularly important year for the artist due to the amount of exhibitions dedicated to his work, among them: The Hirshorn Museum, Washington D.C., Crosscurrents of Modernism, Centro Cultural/Art Contemporaneo, Mexico City; Museo de Bellas Artes Collection in Havana, Cuba; America’s Society Art Gallery, New York; Wifredo Lam a retrospective of Works on Paper which traveled to Fundacio La Caixa in Barcelona; and the retrospective of Lam’s work that opened December 1992 at the Studio Museum of Harlem, Lam and his contemporaries: 1938-1952.