Wifredo Lam, Catalogue raisonné of the painted work, monograph, Vol. I, 1923-1960 (book)

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Wifredo Lam, Catalogue raisonné of the painted work (book) by Lou Laurin-Lam. 1998. Publisher: Acatos. Hardcover with dust jacket, 539 pages in English. Dimensions: 12.59 x 10.03 x 2.08 inches. Very good condition except for some marks on the cover. Shipping time: allow 2 weeks.

Wifredo Lam was born in December 1902 in Sagua Grande, Cuba, and died in September 1982 in Paris at the age of 79. He grew up in a multicultural environment with a Cuban mother of Spanish and Congolese descent, a father of Chinese descent, and a godmother who was a priestess of Santería, a pre-Columbian religion of Cuba. From the age of 7, Wifredo Lam discovered a vocation for drawing and practiced his art by depicting the plants and botanical gardens of Havana. In 1918, he joined the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, where he received instruction in painting. Wifredo Lam attended several institutions before settling in Madrid and pursuing his own experiments and research.

The early years of Wifredo Lam’s career were marked by his encounter with Surrealism. He became close to several nonconformist painters such as Cézanne and Gauguin, whose influence is visible in his compositions. Upon his arrival in France, Lam met Pablo Picasso, who expressed his approval and introduced him to his Cubist circle, as well as André Breton, who was associated with the Surrealist movement. All of these encounters encouraged the young painter to devote himself to creating figures with fragmented, geometric bodies whose faces strangely resemble African masks. At the time, the Spanish Civil War and the death of his wife had a significant influence on his painting, whose colors became increasingly cold and dark.

Beginning in the 1940s, Wifredo Lam moved to Cuba, where the Black population faced many difficulties. The artist therefore decided to use his art to express the culture and rituals of this community. The imagery he developed is a blend of Cubism, Surrealism, African art, and Afro-Cuban art.

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