527 - Wifredo Lam* (Sagua la Grande 1902 - 1982 Paris)

Wifredo Lam* (Sagua la Grande 1902 - 1982 Paris) Acide Doux, 1973 color lithography/paper 75 x 55 cm signed W. Lam, numbered 2/90 SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 250 - 400 STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 250 Wifredo Lam was born on December 8, 1902, in Sagua la Grande, Cuba. His father was of Chinese descent, while his mother had African and Spanish roots. This multifaceted cultural background proved fundamental to Lam’s artistic development. He initially received an academic education in Havana; in 1923, he moved to Spain and continued his studies in Madrid. During his long stay in Spain, Lam engaged with the European art tradition and the developments of modernism. He sided with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. In 1938, Lam relocated to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso and established connections with leading figures of Cubism and Surrealism, including André Breton. In this milieu, he also met artists and writers such as Roberto Matta, Yves Tanguy, and Benjamin Péret. His encounter with Breton’s circle encouraged him not merely to adopt European avant-garde movements but to fuse them with his own cultural experiences and imagery. Joan Miró—whose poetic world of signs and free formal language were significant to the evolution of modernism—also serves as an important point of comparison for Lam’s biomorphic and symbolic visual language. Lam returned to Cuba in 1941. Re-engaging with the religious and cultural traditions of the Afro-Caribbean population—particularly the world of Santería—led to a decisive shift in the direction of his work. In paintings such as The Jungle (1943), he developed hybrid, mask-like figures that blur the boundaries between human, animal, and plant. This visual language combines Cubist deconstruction of form and Surrealist imagination with a critique of colonial exploitation, racism, and social power dynamics. It also exists within a broader intellectual context involving Aimé Césaire and his reflections on Black identity, the colonial experience, and Caribbean culture. After World War II, Lam lived primarily between Paris, Cuba, and Italy. In addition to painting, he also worked as a draftsman, graphic artist, ceramicist, and sculptor. René Portocarrero, Amelia Peláez, and Agustín Cárdenas stand out as key artistic reference points within Cuban modernism. Like Lam, they developed distinctive visual languages ​​that fused international modernism, Caribbean life, and local cultural traditions. His body of work is considered a seminal example of a transcultural modernism that did not merely adopt European concepts of art but fundamentally expanded upon them from a Caribbean perspective. Wifredo Lam died in Paris on September 11, 1982. PLEASE NOTE: The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights and platform fee. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid, the buyer's premium and platform fee. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items. The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.