Wifredo Lam

Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla (December 8, 1902 – September 11, 1982), better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture.

Inspired by and in contact with some of the most renowned artists of the 20th century, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Lam melded his influences and created a unique style, which was ultimately characterized by the prominence of hybrid figures.

This distinctive visual style of his also influences many artists.

Though he was predominantly a painter, he also worked with sculpture, ceramics and printmaking in his later life.

Wifredo Lam was born and raised in Sagua La Grande, a village in the sugar farming province of Villa Clara, Cuba.

He was of mixed-race ancestry: his mother, the former Ana Serafina Castilla, was born to a Congolese former slave mother and a Cuban Mulatto father and his father, Yam Lam, was a Chinese immigrant.

In Sagua La Grande, Lam was surrounded by many people of African descent; his family, like many others, practiced Catholicism alongside their African traditions.

Through his godmother, Matonica Wilson, a Santería priestess locally celebrated as a healer and sorceress, he was exposed to rites of the African orishas.

While Lam was never initiated into Santería, Palo Monte, or Abakuá Secret Society, he was familiar with the practices, as cultural participation was widespread in Cuba.

His contact with African celebrations and spiritual practices proved to be his largest artistic influence.

In 1916, Lam moved to Havana to study law, a path that his family had thrust upon him.

Simultaneously he also began studying tropical plants at the Botanical Gardens.

From 1918 to 1923, Lam studied painting at the Escuela de Bellas Artes.

However, he disliked both academic teaching and painting.

He left for Madrid, Spain, in the autumn of 1923 to further his art studies.

In 1923, Lam began studying in Madrid under Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor y Zaragoza, the curator of the Museo del Prado and teacher of Salvador Dalí.

In the mornings he would attend his conservative teacher's studio, while he spent his evenings working alongside young, nonconformist painters.

At the Prado, he discovered and was awed by the work of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel I.

While Lam's early paintings were in the modernist Spanish tradition, his work soon became more simplified and decorative.

Though his dislike for academic conservatism persisted, his time in Spain marked his technical development, in which he began to merge a primitive aesthetic and the traditions of Western composition.

It was in Paris that Lam was exposed to conventions of African sculpture.

In 1929, he married Eva Piriz, but both she and their young son died in 1931 of tuberculosis; it is likely that this personal tragedy contributed to the dark nature of his work.

During the 1930s, Lam was exposed to a variety of influences.

The influence of Surrealism was discernible in his work, as well as that of Henri Matisse.

Lam had begun to incorporate Surrealist techniques before his time in Europe, learning of artists like Matisse through publications and news from a friend.

Throughout Lam's travels through the Spanish countryside, he developed empathy for the Spanish peasants, whose troubles in some ways mirrored those of the former slaves he grew up around in Cuba.

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he sided with the Republicans in 1936-1937 and used his talent to fashion Republican posters and propaganda.

Drafted to defend Madrid, Lam was incapacitated during the fighting in late 1937 and was sent to Barcelona.

There he met Helena Holzer, a German researcher, and the Catalan artist known as Manolo Hugué.

Manolo gave Lam the letter of introduction that sparked his friendship with Picasso, whose artwork had impressed and inspired Lam a year before when he saw an exhibition in Madrid.

In 1938, Lam moved to Paris.

He quickly gained the support of Picasso, who introduced him to many of the leading artists of the time, such as Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and Joan Miró.

In his trip to Mexico in the same year, Lam stayed with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Much of his work in 1938 possessed emotional intensity; the subject matter ranged from interacting couples to women in despair and showed a considerably stronger African influence, seen in the figures' angular outlines and the synthesis of their bodies.

While Lam began simplifying his forms before he came into contact with Picasso's work, it is apparent that Picasso had a significant impact on him.

With regard to Picasso's exhibition, Lam said that it was "not only a revelation, but… a shock."

Picasso also introduced him to Pierre Loeb, a Parisian art dealer; Loeb gave Lam his first exhibition at the Galerie Pierre Loeb in 1939, which received an enthusiastic response from critics.

Picasso and Lam also exhibited their work together at the Perls Galleries in New York in the same year.

Lam's work went from showing the influence of Matisse, seen in his still lifes, landscapes and simplified portraits, to being influenced by Cubism.

Mainly working with gouache, Lam began producing stylized figures that appear to be influenced by Picasso.