Wifredo Lam Cuban Artist Original Watercolor, 1961

Name: Wifredo Lam Cuban Artist Original Watercolor, 1961
Brand: Wifredo Lam
Price: 28500 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

This original watercolor by Cuban artist Wifredo Lam is in excellent condition and measures 12"h x 10"w. It is signed lower right and dated 1961. It bears a simple gold frame that measures approximately 20 x 18 inches. This is a wonderful example by the artist: a mix of Surrealism and his Afro-Cuban heritage. Wifredo Lam was the youngest of nine children and the only son of a Chinese father and an Afro-Cuban mother. He was born in 1902 in Cuba. His father adhered to Confucius and Lao Tse, his mother raised him as a Roman Catholic. Had his godmother had her way, he would have become a Santeria priest-healer. He left Havana when he was twenty-one to study art in Madrid. There he was exposed to modernism: Surrealism, Picasso and Matisse. In 1930, Lam married a Spanish woman, but a year later both his bride and their newborn son tragically succumbed to tuberculosis. He remained in Spain, fought with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Injured, he was taken to a Catalonian hospital where he met a German chemist, Helena Holzer. Later they were married. In 1938, after being wounded while fighting for the Republican army during the siege of Madrid, he moved to Paris, where he established a lifelong friendship with Picasso. In 1940, with World War II and the internment by the Nazis of his wife, Lam fled with her to Marseilles and in 1941, boarded a ship back to Cuba. In the Paris years, Lam assimilated the Surrealist and Cubist styles. Then, during the decade in Cuba, he fused the modernist elements with his Afro-Cuban heritage, forging his own unique style. In 1952, having divorced Helena, he moved permanently to Paris. His international reputation began to soar. In 1960 he married a Swedish artist with whom he had three sons. He supported Fidel Castro, and he enjoyed two tributes at the Museo de Belles Artes, in Havana. He died in 1982.

Creator:

Wifredo Lam (Artist)

Dimensions:

Height: 20.5 in (52.07 cm)Width: 18 in (45.72 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)

Materials and Techniques:

Paint

Period:

1960-1969

Date of Manufacture:

1961

Condition:

Seller Location: