La Réunion is among the most important works of Wifredo Lam, together with his later masterpiece, The Jungle (1943), now at MoMA. Now, this masterpiece is heading to auction on 11 November at Christie's as part of their 20th Century Evening Sale in New York.
Lam, born to a Chinese father and a Cuban mother of Afro-European origins, spent a significant amount of time in Italy and Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Fernand Léger and numerous poets, with whom he shared the same artistic desire to "paint the drama of [his] country." Lam's work draws on this diverse background, often incorporating Western-style African motifs, particularly with themes borrowed from Surrealism and Post-Cubism.
Painted by Lam in 1942 in Cuba, after a very long time in Europe, La Réunion depicts a woman with a horse's head (known as a femme cheval), a motif he used in numerous works as a symbol of Surrealism, divinity, and transfiguration, combining European artistic elements with Cuban influence.
"This monumental work masterfully encapsulates all that is Lam—his singular contribution to the history of modern art—the convergence of 20th century vanguard practices with New World cosmologies," said Marysol Nieves, Christie’s Senior Specialist, Latin American Paintings. "By eschewing conventional notions of purity and hierarchy and embracing cultural hybridity and his diasporic roots, Lam redefined the parameters of modernism.”
The work heads to auction with an estimate of $3-4 million, with the potential to set a new record for Lam. His current record was set in 2018 when his oil on canvas painting A Trois centimètres de la Terre sold for €4.4 million (£3.9 mil) at Sotheby's.
