Lot Essay
Wifredo Lam had a long and prolific career as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and ceramist. His career spanned six decades during which the artist left an indelible mark on his field as a colleague, friend, and contemporary of giants in the international arena of arts and letters. Lam was a man who acknowledged his rich ancestry--African, Chinese and Spanish. He contributed to modernism in very special ways. In his mature work, he drew on several modernist vocabularies to express Afro-Cuban subjects at a time when they were outside the purview of mainstream art.
The first half of Lam's life and work was punctuated by moves from place to place. He left his hometown of Sagua la Grande in 1916 for Havana where he studied at the San Alejandro Academy (1918-1923). He then went to Spain to study, but the Civil War forced him to leave France in late spring of 1938. Two years later, when the Germans occupied Paris, the artist fled to Marseilles, where he remained until he could return home to Cuba (mid-1941).
While in Spain, Lam lived in and visited many cities, including Madrid, Cuenca, Leon (where he participated in two shows), Malaga, Caldes de Montbul, Valencia, and Barcelona. (1) He regularly went to a café where he met with a group of intellectuals, among whom were Federico García Lorca, Alejo Carpentier who later was a close friend of his in Havana, Earl Einstein, Nicolás Guillen, the Afro-Cuban poet who had just published his first Afro-Cuban poems, Motivos, Valle Inclán, and the Guatemalan Nobel Prize writer Miguel Angel Asturias. Their discussions centered around politics since all of them were sympathizers of the Rebuplican party. Lam became connected to several political organizations, including Estudiantes Latinoamericanos, Organización Anti-Fascistas, and Federación Universitaria Española. He also met Balbina Barrera, a painter, who became his companion.
Between 1933 and 1936, Lam moved back to Madrid. Because of severe problems caused by poor health and depression, he produced very little work. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Lam was recruited by a friend to work at a weapons factory and had to leave behind his art, which he never recovered. Within six months (1937), Lam was sent to a sanatorium in Caldes de Montbul, near Barcelona, to be treated for possible amoebic dysentery. During those months Lam made a short trip to Valencia, the temporary capital of the Spanish Rebublic, where he met the director of fine arts, who invited him to do a painting on the theme of the war. The work was to have been included in the Spanish Pavillion, which the minister of culture and fine arts was in the process of completing for the Paris World Fair. When Lam returned to Caldes de Montbul, he began work on several large-scale backdrops for the plays at the Caldes theater. In June, he began work on La Guerra Civil, commissioned by the city of Valencia. The subject recalls Picasso's Guernica, a work that protested the bombing of that town by the Italian allies of the Nationalist forces.
During his years in Spain, Lam maintained a dialogue with both academic and modernist artists. He moved forward and backward searching for his artistic voice. By 1937, however, Lam focused on Henri Matisse's work. We know from María Lluisa Borrás's documentation that Lam purchased a book on Matisse that year. (2) The book undoubtedly afforded him a close look at the French artist's work at a time when Lam was working on self-portraits, couples, single figures, and still lifes. At the time Lam lived in Barcelona in an apartment that had earthenware tile floors and a veranda with a wall made of colored glass. In numerous works painted in the Mediterranean city, the artist depicted a corner of his Madrid attic studio from memory, with a view reminiscent of Matisse's interior rooms with a view to the outside.
Sans titre is one of many works from this period that celebrates Lam's translations of the French master. The bodies of the two seated women appear united through heavy, ondulating lines. Their forms, rendered close to the picture plane, seem to burst within the compressed space. Their physical interlocking, together with their facial expressions, convey a sense of urgency, relived only by the beautiful pale colors punctuated by blues and greens. This painting was executed at the height of the Spanish Civil War, when the artist was most probably still in Barcelona. (3) The painting expresses in subtle ways, through body language, the anxiety of the period. It also introduces some of the cubist structures that became more specific during Lam's Paris years. Sans titre also incorporates generalized Africanizing elements in the rendering of the women's faces.
This untitled painting seems hauntingly expressive today, some sixty years after it was completed. One senses the terror imparted by the two women who cling to each other. This work, together with many others by Lam on the subject of war, was in response to the continued bombings of Barcelona. The imagery in Sans titre brings to mind recent conflicts, a leitmotif in the Twentieth-century cultural landscape. Lam's art during the Spanish war years, in fact, forms a significant corpus apart from his brief Surrealist production in Marseilles or his Afro-Cuban directions of the early Havana years.
We are grateful to Julia P. Herzberg, Ph.D., Ar Historian and Curator, for her assistance in writing the above essay for the present lot
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1. For a thorough investigation of Lam's Spanish period, see Maria Lluisa Borrás, 'Lam in Spain,' Wifredo Lam: Catalogue Raisonné of the Painted Work, 1923-1960, (Lausanne; Sylvio Acatos, 1996), p. 18-35
2. Borrás, ibid., p. 45
3. Lam, who arrived in Paris on 1 May 1938, continued the theme of the Spanish Civil War
The first half of Lam's life and work was punctuated by moves from place to place. He left his hometown of Sagua la Grande in 1916 for Havana where he studied at the San Alejandro Academy (1918-1923). He then went to Spain to study, but the Civil War forced him to leave France in late spring of 1938. Two years later, when the Germans occupied Paris, the artist fled to Marseilles, where he remained until he could return home to Cuba (mid-1941).
While in Spain, Lam lived in and visited many cities, including Madrid, Cuenca, Leon (where he participated in two shows), Malaga, Caldes de Montbul, Valencia, and Barcelona. (1) He regularly went to a café where he met with a group of intellectuals, among whom were Federico García Lorca, Alejo Carpentier who later was a close friend of his in Havana, Earl Einstein, Nicolás Guillen, the Afro-Cuban poet who had just published his first Afro-Cuban poems, Motivos, Valle Inclán, and the Guatemalan Nobel Prize writer Miguel Angel Asturias. Their discussions centered around politics since all of them were sympathizers of the Rebuplican party. Lam became connected to several political organizations, including Estudiantes Latinoamericanos, Organización Anti-Fascistas, and Federación Universitaria Española. He also met Balbina Barrera, a painter, who became his companion.
Between 1933 and 1936, Lam moved back to Madrid. Because of severe problems caused by poor health and depression, he produced very little work. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Lam was recruited by a friend to work at a weapons factory and had to leave behind his art, which he never recovered. Within six months (1937), Lam was sent to a sanatorium in Caldes de Montbul, near Barcelona, to be treated for possible amoebic dysentery. During those months Lam made a short trip to Valencia, the temporary capital of the Spanish Rebublic, where he met the director of fine arts, who invited him to do a painting on the theme of the war. The work was to have been included in the Spanish Pavillion, which the minister of culture and fine arts was in the process of completing for the Paris World Fair. When Lam returned to Caldes de Montbul, he began work on several large-scale backdrops for the plays at the Caldes theater. In June, he began work on La Guerra Civil, commissioned by the city of Valencia. The subject recalls Picasso's Guernica, a work that protested the bombing of that town by the Italian allies of the Nationalist forces.
During his years in Spain, Lam maintained a dialogue with both academic and modernist artists. He moved forward and backward searching for his artistic voice. By 1937, however, Lam focused on Henri Matisse's work. We know from María Lluisa Borrás's documentation that Lam purchased a book on Matisse that year. (2) The book undoubtedly afforded him a close look at the French artist's work at a time when Lam was working on self-portraits, couples, single figures, and still lifes. At the time Lam lived in Barcelona in an apartment that had earthenware tile floors and a veranda with a wall made of colored glass. In numerous works painted in the Mediterranean city, the artist depicted a corner of his Madrid attic studio from memory, with a view reminiscent of Matisse's interior rooms with a view to the outside.
Sans titre is one of many works from this period that celebrates Lam's translations of the French master. The bodies of the two seated women appear united through heavy, ondulating lines. Their forms, rendered close to the picture plane, seem to burst within the compressed space. Their physical interlocking, together with their facial expressions, convey a sense of urgency, relived only by the beautiful pale colors punctuated by blues and greens. This painting was executed at the height of the Spanish Civil War, when the artist was most probably still in Barcelona. (3) The painting expresses in subtle ways, through body language, the anxiety of the period. It also introduces some of the cubist structures that became more specific during Lam's Paris years. Sans titre also incorporates generalized Africanizing elements in the rendering of the women's faces.
This untitled painting seems hauntingly expressive today, some sixty years after it was completed. One senses the terror imparted by the two women who cling to each other. This work, together with many others by Lam on the subject of war, was in response to the continued bombings of Barcelona. The imagery in Sans titre brings to mind recent conflicts, a leitmotif in the Twentieth-century cultural landscape. Lam's art during the Spanish war years, in fact, forms a significant corpus apart from his brief Surrealist production in Marseilles or his Afro-Cuban directions of the early Havana years.
We are grateful to Julia P. Herzberg, Ph.D., Ar Historian and Curator, for her assistance in writing the above essay for the present lot
__________________________________________
1. For a thorough investigation of Lam's Spanish period, see Maria Lluisa Borrás, 'Lam in Spain,' Wifredo Lam: Catalogue Raisonné of the Painted Work, 1923-1960, (Lausanne; Sylvio Acatos, 1996), p. 18-35
2. Borrás, ibid., p. 45
3. Lam, who arrived in Paris on 1 May 1938, continued the theme of the Spanish Civil War