Wifredo Lam (1902-1982)

Acquired from the artist
Private Collection, Spain
Acquired from the above (1996)

This work has been restored and should be hung in its current state. The canvas has been lined with Beva-371 as an adhesive. The stretcher is original. The painting is clean, retouched and lightly varnished. Under ultraviolet light, most of the retouches can be seen in a vertical line in the wall beginning in the center right and extending 8 inches. There is one spot of retouching in the figure’s arm in the lower right, a few tiny dots in her nose and shoulder on the left of the composition, some isolated retouches in her jaw, two spots in her hair, and a few tiny dots on the upper left edge. The painting is in very fresh and attractive condition. (This condition report has been provided courtesy of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.)
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After attending the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Havana from 1919 to 1922, Wifredo Lam settled in Spain in 1923. It was here where he was introduced to Madrid's artistic society by Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor, then Director of El Prado Museum. Soon thereafter, Lam enrolled in the highly acclaimed San Fernando Academy. While he studied under conservative professors, Lam visited the Prado often, extensively copying the great masters: Bosch, El Greco, Velázquez. Indeed his first mature style synthesized much of their influence as well as that of Catalan painter Hermenegilgo Anglada-Camarasa whose stylistic affiliations gravitated around Fauvism, Oriental Art and the Vienna Secession movement. 

The present painting is a true discovery. The current owner acquired it from a family member of a Spanish journalist who was close to the artist in the early 1930’s. It is believed to be a portrait of Eva, the artist's first wife. Wifredo Lam's catalogue raisonné reports just a few paintings from 1930 and 1931 of which only two or three works are known to represent Eva and their son, Wilfredo Víctor, named after the artist.

Very little is known about Eva whose real name was Sebastiana Piriz. In a book published in 1982 by Antonio Núñez-Jiménez, the author refers to information given to him by the artist and by his wife Lou Laurin in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. According to Núñez-Jiménez, Lam had met Eva--as he chose to call her--on a walk in Madrid in 1926 or 1927. “She was all dressed in black.” She was 23, he was 27. By 1929, she would give birth to a son. Sadly months after their marriage, “Eva contracted tuberculosis, our son as well. I had just enough to feed them, it took me a month to paint a painting and at the time I sold them for about $10. With that money I ran to the market and the pharmacy to buy the necessary food and medicines. When she could no longer move she would tell me from her bed how to prepare food…so when she died, I knew how to cook!” (1) Soon thereafter, their son Wilfredo would also die tragically. He was one year old.

As an evocation of Eva, the composition presents a very stylized woman sitting by a table near an open bay, under the moonlight and some passing clouds. The sharp contrast between light and shades gives the painting a dramatic character. Her rounded and generous arms and breasts fill the composition. The woman’s face in full profile looks profoundly melancholic as her gaze falls out of the frame, past the dark fruit she holds in her left hand, perhaps a symbol of the loss recently suffered by the couple.

(1) Antonio Núñez Jiménez, Wifredo Lam, La Habana, 1982, p. 93-94