Wifredo Lam at MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art had a special exhibit on Wifredo Lam, a fascinating 20th century artist I didn’t learn about in my college art history classes.
Lam was Cuban, of African and Chinese heritage. He moved Madrid as a young man in the 1920s to continue his art training. During the Spanish Civil War, he joined the Republican army. While recuperating in Barcelona from chemical poisoning, Lam painted a monumental piece called La Guerra Civil (1937). I couldn’t help comparing it to another monumental anti-fascist work, Guernica, which Pablo Picasso painted that same year. Both paintings were exhibited at the Spanish Pavilion at the Exposition Internationale in Paris. Both portrayed scenes of horrific violence, but where Picasso’s was a screaming punch in the gut, Lam’s was a silent, anguished struggle.
In 1938, Lam moved to Paris and met Picasso, who introduced him to his friends - Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, and other members of the avant garde. Lam even visited Mexico and stayed with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. An aspiring artist couldn’t ask for more illustrious supporters! Lam’s work in France reflected the influence of Cubism, Primitivism, and Surrealism, but he was also developing his own unique style, and making effective use of paper (easier to procure during wartime) instead of canvas.
Lam returned to Cuba in 1941 and re-immersed himself in Afro-Cuban culture. He began painting strange hybrid figures - part human, part animal, part plant - in lush tropical settings. La Jungla/The Jungle (1942-1943) is his most famous work, and had a place of honor in the exhibit (it is part of the MoMA’s permanent collection). I was drawn to the fanciful figures and tropical colors of Lam’s paintings from this period, though some of the surreal body parts were vaguely disturbing, much like the paintings of Salvador Dalí.
In 1946, Lam spent several months in Haiti, where he observed Vodou ceremonies and magic rituals. He also traveled back to Europe and saw post-war Paris. His paintings from the late 1940s were darker and more dramatic, with different mythical and mystical elements like magic squares and eggs. For his monumental piece with the unassuming title Large Composition, Lam used kraft paper, a return to wartime materials. He drew with charcoal and painted with diluted oils, leaving large areas of the brown paper bare. It was masterful.
Wifredo Lam was just as prolific and groundbreaking an artist as Picasso and his ilk. Why was the Cuban artist omitted from my college studies of 20th century art? I realize now that the course materials were Euro-centric and more focused on the evolution of Abstract Expressionism than on art that reflected Cuban/African/Asian race, identity, and culture. I’m glad our travels are expanding my art history horizons.
