Pastels

Lam moved to Havana in 1916, studied at the Havana School of Art from 1918 to 1923, and emigrated to Spain in 1923, attending the Madrid School of Art. In 1938 he moved to Paris, where Pablo Picasso introduced him to the circle around André Breton. In 1940 he fled to Marseille and in 1941, along with some Surrealist friends, to Martinique, where he was briefly interned. After a wartime return to Cuba in 1942 and an extended stay in New York between 1947 and 1952, as well as sojourns between Cuba and Paris, he ended his life in the French capital in 1982.

Wifredo Lam's powerful painting is closely associated with the Santería cult, as it seems to evoke Caribbean-African spirits and forms in a wildly dance-like manner.