Wifredo Lam (1902-1982)

Joseph Nadal, Port au Prince, Haiti

Port-au-Prince, Centre d'art Galerie, Lam, January 24-February 3, 1946

This painting is stretched on a more recent stretcher and appears to have been lightly lined, or is at least backed with another piece of canvas. Whether or not the original canvas is adhered to this second canvas is unknown, but the original canvas seems delightfully loose and supple. The paint layer is stable and well stretched. There are no visible blemishes to the painting except for one small damage in the upper left corner where the canvas is broken. Other than this the painting seems to be un-interfered with; there are no damages or restorations. The small blemish in the upper left could be restored and other than this, the painting should be hung as is. This condition report has been provided courtesy of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.
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After having studied and quickly developed as a gifted artist in Spain and France, Wifredo Lam returned to Cuba via Marseilles and the Island of Guadeloupe in 1941. After the fall of France to the Germans in 1940, he and an important group of liberal intellectuals and artists led by André Breton managed to escape to the Antilles.
In Guadeloupe, he would meet and befriend poet Aimé Césaire who was the local champion of Négritude, a nascent international literary and political movement in the French colonies aiming at the valorization of African culture.
Césaire´s novel ideas would help Lam to see the Cuban reality with a different eye. He arrived in his native land in August 1941 with a bag of mixed feelings: happy to feel safe at home, far from the ravages of war, but also shocked by the poverty and virtual segregation of the descendents of the African slaves. He would quickly start a radically new artistic production where the African theme was at its core. Responding to his ancestral voices while remaining more an observer than a participant he would develop new themes in a new "Africanized" aesthetics. Lam gets familiarized with Santería (a Cuban syncretism of the Yoruba religion) with the help of his sister Eloisa. He also discusses its origins and subtleties with anthropologist Lydia Cabrera and writers Alejo Carpentier and Pierre Mabille and he quickly learns the names and the powers of a myriad of spirits governing the believers living in the island's provocative environment. By observing the religious ceremonies, the "priesthood" and their ritual accessories, the offerings, the music, the "dancing" of the possessed  and the ritual sacrifices to the different Orishas (Yoruba entities) he soon found himself working from the inside out with a new visual alphabet and a plethora of new subjects for his compositions.
By the time he visited Haiti in 1945, Wifredo Lam was a successful artist with three exhibitions at Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, two with Pierre Loeb in Paris and he had sold the famous Jungle to MoMA. He brought with him to Port au Prince twenty-one paintings that were exhibited between January and February 1946 at the Centre d´Art, the most important exhibition space in the Capital. Lam believed that by showing his new compositions in this impoverished Antillean country he would be strengthening the values and contributing to the common identity of the African Diaspora in the old colonies, a core value of the Négritude movement. His exhibition was well attended and the short catalogue presentation was written by Bréton himself.
The work Untitled, was most probably exhibited on this occasion. The grandfather of the present owner was one of the supporters of the Centre d´Art. He is said to have purchased the painting on the opening night of the exhibition. Although the titles of the paintings were published in the leaflet/catalogue, it did not include measurements or dates. Untitled seems to represent an aerial dance of playful horned spirits filling a nocturnal space above the ceremonial offerings represented by the arrangement of leaves in the bottom center. Four spirits in the swirling foreground show startling eyes as if surprised by an imaginary flash. On the upper right, a distinctive Femme Cheval, one of Lam's favorite hybrid creatures hovers between a pair of a celestial creature wings. Principally painted in black over the white canvas, this strongly graphic composition also exhibits a fine tonal range of fine blues, greens, yellows and reds that somehow humanizes the painting by making it more plausible and real. It is with a great joy that Sotheby's offers this painting which has recently resurfaced in Haiti.