Untitled Wifredo Lam

• The painting was created around 1972 in Lam’s studio in Albissola Marina, a meeting place for the avant-garde centred on Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni • It brings together central motifs of his work: the horned heads of the Orisha Elegguá and echoes of the ‘Femme cheval’ • Lam’s standing in 20th-century art was cemented not least by the first comprehensive US retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York Wifredo Lam had already led an eventful life spanning continents when he settled in Albissola Marina, Liguria, in the early 1960s. Born in Sagua la Grande, Cuba, in 1902, he set off for Europe in 1923, studied in Madrid and, in Paris, became acquainted with Pablo Picasso and the circle of Surrealists around André Breton. It was not until his return to Cuba in 1941 – after almost two decades abroad – that he developed the visual language that would make him famous: In his paintings, the myths and rituals of Afro-Cuban Santería merge with the achievements of Cubism and Surrealism to create a wholly unique, hybrid world of humans, animals and plants. In 1962, Lam set up a studio in Albissola, where he would work for two decades. At that time, this town with a long tradition of ceramics was a vibrant hub for the avant-garde, where Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni were also active. During these years, Lam refined his repertoire of figures: the backgrounds became increasingly monochrome, often applied merely as a glaze, and the pictorial focus centred entirely on the line. This work, created around 1970, belongs to this late creative phase and demonstrates just how sparingly Lam now employed his artistic means. Against a dark, violet-tinged background, two round, horned heads emerge – the characteristic symbol of Elegguá, the Orisha of paths and thresholds, who appears time and again in Lam’s work. One glows in bright yellow, the other is plunged into deep darkness; both are outlined with a few, confident strokes. Behind them rises a structure of pointed, angular forms, reminiscent of the ‘Femme cheval’ – the horse-woman who, in Santería, embodies the believer possessed by an Orisha and who has been one of Lam’s central motifs since the 1940s. This small format thus condenses, within a confined space, what has defined Lam’s work for decades: the encounter between European modernism and the visual world of his Cuban heritage. The significance of this work within 20th-century art is underlined by the major retrospective ‘When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2025/26, which presented his overall body of work spanning six decades for the first time in the USA. | 1902 Sagua la Grande/Kuba - Paris 1982 | Moderne Kunst | Gemälde | Nummer: 26x2287 | Provenance: Galleria d’Arte Spagnoli, Florenz; Gruppo ’73, Florenz, verso auf der Leinwand mit typografischem Etikett und Stempeln; Porro & C., Mailand 29.11.2007, Los 101; Internationale Privatsammlung.

Estimate:£27,537.34

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