(Cuba 1902–1982 Paris)
Untitled, 1973, signed, signed on the reverse, oil on canvas, 25.3 x 34.3 cm, framed

This work is registered in the Wifredo Lam’s Archive under no. 73.32

Provenance:
Galerie Daniel Lelong, Paris
Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna
European Private Collection
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Literature:
L. L. Lam, E. Lam, Wifredo Lam. Catalogue Raisonné of the Painted Work, vol. II 1961–1982, Acatos 2002, p. 397, no. 73.32, with ill.

From the 1950s onwards, Lam led an increasingly cos-mo-politan life: Paris, New York, Caracas, Zurich, and Albissola in Italy were listed among the places where he lived. (….) His cosmopolitanism, which from the 1940s onwards was accompanied by international solo exhi-bi-tions in the Caribbean, Latin America, the USA and Europe, turned Cuba almost into a secondary venue of his biography. But Lam never lost touch with his island, least of all in the wake of the Cuban revolution of 1959 that for many artists and intellec-tuals nourished the hope of establishing a new power balance, which would eventually lead to more equality and social justice not only in Cuba but on the entire Latin American continent. Due to these hopes, Lam remained faithful to the Cuban revolution throughout his life. (………….)

Lam’s collaborative projects from the 1960s onwards also demonstrate Lam's ongoing commitment with the transcultural memories of what he once called the "drama of his country": the transatlantic slave trade. However, Lam turns to hybridity as a means of resistance. The transversality of his syncretistic art can thus be understood as a rebellion against a worlding, through which the European colonial powers imposed a monolithic Christian worldview on non-Western cultures. Surrealism's method of liberating the power of the unconscious and the dreams substantiates Lam's global message to the oppressed people to re-conquer the freedom of their spirit and to disturb all actors of (post-)colonial exploitation in the greatest possible way.

Bildcredit:
Wifredo Lam, c. 1948, © Michel Sima / Bridgeman Images, Bildrecht, Vienna, 2022