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Lot Essay
Wifredo Lam was born in Sagua La Grande, province of Las Villas, to an elderly Chinese father and an Afro-Cuban mother. He studied art at the San Alejandro Academy in Havana, where he was a student of Leopoldo Romañach, who taught other members of the first generation of Cuban vanguard painters, such as Victor Manuel, Eduardo Abela, and Amelia Peláez. Lam continued his studies in Madrid at the San Fernando Academy, where his teacher was Fernández Alvarez de Sotomayor, who also taught Salvador Dalí. While in Spain he encountered the work of Picasso, Matisse and the constructivist Joaquín Torres-García in exhibitions in Barcelona, after which he abandoned academic realism in favor of a modern visual vocabulary. After the loss of his first wife and child, and fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Lam moved to Paris, where through Picasso he met and befriended the surrealists. By the time of his first one person show in Paris (Pierre Loeb Gallery, 1939), Lam had developed a style that synthesized the post-cubist forms of Picasso, with a rediscovery of his Afro-Cuban heritage and a sense of color that evoked his native Caribbean. He would deepen his work through this integration--with variations--for decades to come until his death.
By the 1960s Lam favored a more monochromatic palette, playing with browns, ochre, grays and blues. His application of paint became more fluid, applying his colors with lots of turpentine and giving the appearance of watercolor washes. J'arrive (Le Temoin), which translates as "I arrive (The Sign),"dates from 1961 when Lam had already settled in Albisola Mare, Italy and his son Eskil had been born from his union with Lou Laurin. The painting depicts a single female figure standing in the middle of the vertical rectangle. The lines are precise and clean, possessing a neo-classical elegance. The palette of grays subtly shifts from blue to ochre, from foreground to top background. Totem-like, the figure stands with her hands crossed in front of her torso. Her breasts hang like geometric fruits, formally pointing down to the pubic area, which is also triangle-like. Above her head a bird floats, and seems tangled with the figure's hair, which in itself evokes either bamboo reeds or sugar cane stalks. The small, mask-like face of the figure perhaps embodies an impersonal spirit like the Basong sculptors of the Congo. Unlike the work of the 1940s, which revealed the "convulsive beauty" required by the surrealist poet André Breton, J'arrive (Le Temoin) is a serene picture where the forms become graphic signs that construct a harmonious balance between the female figure and the bird. The rhythm of vertical lines and washes of color projects a mysterious quality that recalls the painter's Chinese heritage.
Alejandro Anreus, Ph.D.
By the 1960s Lam favored a more monochromatic palette, playing with browns, ochre, grays and blues. His application of paint became more fluid, applying his colors with lots of turpentine and giving the appearance of watercolor washes. J'arrive (Le Temoin), which translates as "I arrive (The Sign),"dates from 1961 when Lam had already settled in Albisola Mare, Italy and his son Eskil had been born from his union with Lou Laurin. The painting depicts a single female figure standing in the middle of the vertical rectangle. The lines are precise and clean, possessing a neo-classical elegance. The palette of grays subtly shifts from blue to ochre, from foreground to top background. Totem-like, the figure stands with her hands crossed in front of her torso. Her breasts hang like geometric fruits, formally pointing down to the pubic area, which is also triangle-like. Above her head a bird floats, and seems tangled with the figure's hair, which in itself evokes either bamboo reeds or sugar cane stalks. The small, mask-like face of the figure perhaps embodies an impersonal spirit like the Basong sculptors of the Congo. Unlike the work of the 1940s, which revealed the "convulsive beauty" required by the surrealist poet André Breton, J'arrive (Le Temoin) is a serene picture where the forms become graphic signs that construct a harmonious balance between the female figure and the bird. The rhythm of vertical lines and washes of color projects a mysterious quality that recalls the painter's Chinese heritage.
Alejandro Anreus, Ph.D.