Wifredo Lam
Cuban modernist who put Afro-Cuban religion into a language learned from Picasso and the Surrealists.
Wifredo Lam was born at Sagua la Grande in Cuba in 1902 to a Chinese father and a mother of African and Spanish descent. He studied in Madrid, fought on the Republican side, and reached Paris in 1938, where Picasso took him up immediately and introduced him to Breton and the Surrealists. Fleeing the German occupation on the same ship as Breton and Levi-Strauss, he returned to Cuba in 1941 and painted The Jungle in 1943 — the picture that fused a Cubist-Surrealist vocabulary with the imagery of Santeria into something neither European movement could claim. He worked between Cuba, Paris and Italy until his death in 1982.
The 1940s Cuban paintings lead this market decisively and are heavily studied. Lam is significantly forged, particularly in works on paper, and the Wifredo Lam catalogue raisonne and the artist's estate are the reference points. He worked extensively in gouache and mixed media on paper, and produced a large printed output of lithographs and etchings, much of it in the 1960s and 1970s and modestly valued. Prices are set principally in New York, Paris and the Latin American sales.
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