Wifredo Lam, a Cuban-born painter, will not be precisely little-recognized. Even throughout his day, he was thought-about a cornerstone of the Surrealist motion, befriending André Breton, Pablo Picasso, and others by way of connections solid in France, the place he first gained fame. However Lam’s work past Europe, which he left in 1941, stays lesser-known exterior the Caribbean—one thing {that a} new retrospective on the Museum of Trendy Artwork goals to treatment.
Curated by Christophe Cherix and Beverly Adams, together with Damasia Lacroze and Eva Caston, the MoMA present, billed as Lam’s first US retrospective, includes some 130 works, together with hardly ever seen work and drawings that attest to the artist’s engagement with Afro-Caribbean traditions such because the Lucumà faith. Amongst these items is one newly acquired work from MoMA’s holdings that’s making its public premiere after years in a non-public assortment. Extra on that piece and others beneath.
Learn a full overview of the present right here.
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Picture Credit score: ©Wifredo Lam Property/Adagp, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Capriles Cannizzaro Household Assortment A few of Lam’s earliest works have been made in Spain, the place he completed out artwork faculty. This one responds to the horrors of the Spanish Civil Battle.
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Picture Credit score: ©Wifredo Lam Property/Adagp, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Museum of Trendy Artwork Fata Morgana was produced as an illustration for a e-book by André Breton, who has generally been credited because the chief of the Surrealist motion.
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Picture Credit score: ©Wifredo Lam Property/Adagp, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Museum of Trendy Artwork Generally considered Lam’s masterpiece and produced upon his return to Cuba in 1941, La jungla situates a gaggle of beings amid sugarcane. Their faces resemble African masks, to which Lam usually referred.
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Picture Credit score: ©Wifredo Lam Property/Adagp, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2025/Personal Assortment Lam continued producing dazzlingly coloured work of beings in settings dense with foliage in the course of the Nineteen Forties. This portray’s title might allude to an instrument performed by an angel.
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Picture Credit score: ©Wifredo Lam Property/Adagp, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Museum of Trendy Artwork Grande Composition spent years in a non-public assortment overseas. The Lam present’s co-curator, Christophe Cherix, coaxed the collector in parting with the piece, which has now entered MoMA’s assortment.
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Picture Credit score: ©Wifredo Lam Property/Adagp, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Personal Assortment Throughout the ’50s, Lam started making abstractions that include no apparent figures. The MoMA present asserts that these, too, are rooted in his Afro-Caribbean perspective, alluding to the panorama of Cuba.
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Picture Credit score: ©Wifredo Lam Property/Adagp, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Assortment Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York A horse-like determine referred to as a femme-cheval recurs all through Lam’s oeuvre, which regularly elides the boundary between humanity and different animals.
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Picture Credit score: ©Wifredo Lam Property/Adagp, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Courtesy McClain Gallery/Personal Assortment Damballa, the deity talked about within the title of this portray, recurs all through traditions of the African diaspora, together with Vodun.
