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, Lam melded his influences and created a unique style, which was ultimately characterized by the prominence of hybrid figures. Though he was predominantly a painter, he also worked with sculpture, ceramics and printmaking in his later life.
Background
He was born in the town of Sagua la Grande in Las Villas Province on December 8, 1902. Both his biological heritage and his life and art were a paradigm of cross-cultural interface. His mother was mulatto (the offspring of Caucasian and black parents) and his father was Chinese. He was reared in a household where the practice of the African-derived religion of Santería and Roman Catholicism coexisted, a not uncommon occurrence in Caribbean cultures. His Catholic godmother was an important "santera," or high priest, of the Santería religion, and she was the person who inspired him to paint.
Education
His early education was in the working-class public schools of his town, where his desire to become a teacher gave way to his creative impulses and he began to study art. As a young man in his mid-twenties he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts San Alejandro in Havana, and held his first solo exhibition in his native town before being awarded a scholarship to study abroad. He set sail for Madrid, Spain, in 1923, where he lived for 14 years pursuing art studies at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Madrid. A Spanish functionary in Madrid inadvertently dropped the "1" from "Wilfredo," making Wifrcdo his artistic signature.
Career
While in Spain he went through a series of painful experiences. In 1931 both his Spanish wife and his only child died. From 1936 to 1939 he fought on the side of the Republicans in their unsuccessful fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War. Both the mood of the times and his own pain surface in his paintings of desolate victims of war, which included mothers and children. One of his best-known works of that time, "Mother and Child" (1939), is now in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modem Art (MOMA). Somewhat broken in spirit, he left Spain.
He moved to Paris in 1938 and met fellow artist Pablo Picasso, who at the time was receiving praise for the work "Demoiselles d Avignon, one of the first modern paintings with African influence, which greatly influenced Lam. 1 hrough Picasso, Lam was exposed to African sculpture and surrealism. He developed a lifelong friendship with Picasso and joined his circle of avantgarde artists whose interest and integration of non-European cultural aspects into their art struck a responsive chord in Lam. His paintings of that period exhibit a calligraphic style that displays the Chinese influence on Lam's art.
Lam operated on the stage of international art for most of Iris life and is considered the first "crossover" artist. In addition to having lived and worked in the Caribbean, Spain, and France, the United States was also briefly his home. In 1940 Lam and his friends fled to Marseilles when the Nazi forces invaded Paris. During his short time there he worked on a series of ink drawings Interlude Marseilles (1941), which were the illustrations for Francophile Andre Breton's poem Fata Morgana. In an effort to escape wartom Europe, he joined hundreds of intellectuals aboard the Capitaine Paul Merle en route to Martinique, where he met the poet Aimé Césaire. Lam identified with and was influenced by Césaire's exploration and affirmation of Afro-Caribbean culture. Césaire would later write a tribute to Lam.
Shortly thereafter he was repatriated to Cuba as a result of World War II. Unlike in Europe, the sources of "Africanness" that surrounded him in Cuba were real and not representations on canvas. In Cuba lie immersed himself in Iris Afro-Cuban culture particularly the Yoruba-derived religious practice of Santería. It was during this time starting with a 1943 painting titled "The Jungle," where his mask-like faces reflect Picasso's influence that he established the iconographi- cal and stylistic approach that would make him one of the "New World modernists." These were artists who changed the European radical avantgarde aesthetic and infused it with artistic elements of their cultures within the American continent. He created what is considered one of his masterpieces during this time: "The Murmur" (1943). In this work "a female figure is set against striped palm fronds that vaguely suggest Matisse's lively patterns . . . and bring Picasso to mind, but the details of her face are taken straight from West African sculpture". It was during this period, the 1940s, that Lam's art began to attract national and international recognition with numerous exhibits in Cuba, Europe, and the United States.
Shortly thereafter he was repatriated to Cuba as a result of World War II. Unlike in Europe, the sources of "Africanness" that surrounded him in Cuba were real and not representations on canvas. In Cuba lie immersed himself in Iris Afro-Cuban culture particularly the Yoruba-derived religious practice of Santería. It was during this time starting with a 1943 painting titled "The Jungle," where his mask-like faces reflect Picasso's influence that he established the iconographical and stylistic approach that would make him one of the "New World modernists." These were artists who changed the European radical avantgarde aesthetic and infused it with artistic elements of their cultures within the American continent. He created what is considered one of his masterpieces during this time: "The Murmur" (1943). In this work "a female figure is set against striped palm fronds that vaguely suggest Matisse's lively patterns . . . and bring Picasso to mind, but the details of her face are taken straight from West African sculpture". It was during this period, the 1940s, that Lam's art began to attract national and international recognition with numerous exhibits in Cuba, Europe, and the United States.
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
This tall, skinny man, whose full name was Wilfredo Oscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla, was better known as "El Chino."