Wifredo Lam: The Complete Story
Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) was the Cuban painter who carried European modernism home to Havana and fused it with Afro-Cuban religion, producing The Jungle, the 1943 great work that made Picasso's language speak Santeria.
His life crossed three continents and two wars, and the paintings kept all of it.
Wifredo Lam at a glance
1902. Born in Sagua la Grande, Cuba, to a Chinese father and a mother of African and Spanish descent.
1938. Arrived in Paris, where Picasso took him up and opened every door that mattered.
1941. Left Marseille on the same refugee ship as André Breton and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
1943. Painted The Jungle in Havana.
1982. Died in Paris at 79, with works already hanging at MoMA and the Centre Pompidou.
A childhood built for the work
Born in 1902 in Sagua la Grande, Cuba, Lam was the son of a Chinese immigrant father, already in his eighties, and a mother of African and Spanish descent. His godmother was a priestess of Santeria. Every world that later collided in his paintings was already at his table.
Madrid, war, and a door in Paris
He left for Madrid in 1923 and stayed through the Spanish Civil War, siding with the Republic and painting posters for it.
In 1938 he reached Paris, where Picasso took him up on sight, showed him constantly, and introduced him to everyone.
In 1940 he fled south with Andre Breton's circle, and in 1941 sailed from Marseille to the Caribbean on the same crowded ship as Breton and Claude Levi-Strauss.
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The Jungle
Back in Cuba after eighteen years away, Lam painted The Jungle in 1943: four bamboo-limbed figures with crescent faces rising out of sugarcane, half orisha, half harvest. He said he wanted to paint the drama of his country, and the picture landed like a manifesto. The Museum of Modern Art in New York bought it in 1945.
Fata Morgana, printed under censorship
In Marseille in 1940 and 1941, waiting for a way out, Lam illustrated André Breton’s long poem Fata Morgana.
Vichy censors banned the book. The drawings circulated anyway, hand to hand.
It was his last European work before the Atlantic, and it already looks like The Jungle growing.
The refugee ship
In March 1941 the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle sailed from Marseille packed with hundreds of refugees.
On board: Lam, Breton, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the writer Victor Serge, sleeping in the hold like cargo.
Lévi-Strauss described the crossing in Tristes Tropiques. Lam painted what came after.
Clay on the Ligurian coast
From the 1960s Lam kept a studio in Albissola Marina, an Italian town of ceramists.
In the 1970s he threw himself into clay, producing hundreds of ceramic pieces late in life.
The figures from his canvases turned three dimensional, and the town still shows them.
The myth to retire
He is still filed, lazily, as a follower of Picasso. Look at the direction of travel: Cubism had borrowed the look of African masks. Lam, who grew up inside an African-Atlantic religion, took the borrowed style back to its sources and made it carry real belief. He was not imitating Picasso. He was answering him.
Where to see Wifredo Lam
The Jungle hangs at MoMA in New York. The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana holds the deepest collection, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which gave him a major retrospective in 2015, owns strong works from the Paris years.
The Wifredo Lam questions that keep coming up
What is Wifredo Lam famous for? The Jungle and a body of work fusing Cubism, Surrealism and Afro-Cuban religion.
Was Wifredo Lam a Surrealist? He exhibited with them and Breton championed him, but his imagery came from Santeria as much as from dreams.
What does The Jungle show? Figures rising from sugarcane with mask faces, a vision of Cuba's African heritage and its plantation history.
Where can I see his work? MoMA in New York, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Did Lam know Picasso? Yes. From 1938 Picasso championed him in Paris, introduced him to dealers, and stayed a lifelong reference point.
What was the refugee ship? The Capitaine Paul-Lemerle, which left Marseille in 1941 carrying Lam, André Breton, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and hundreds of others toward the Caribbean.
More secrets to unlock
From the coat check to the main galleries
For years MoMA hung The Jungle by the coat check, and its move into the main galleries tracked, almost exactly, the art world finally taking the Caribbean seriously. The picture did not change. The museum did.