Published by Pace Publishing. Foreword by Alexander Alberro. Text by Kaira Cabañas, Samantha A. Noël, Alexandra Chang. Chronology by Michaëla de Lacaze Mohrmann.
This chronological survey traces the Cuban painter and sculptor Wifredo Lam’s (1902–82) career from the late 1930s to the ’70s, spotlighting the radically syncretic visual language he developed in response to modernism’s Eurocentricity. Born to a Chinese father and Congolese Iberian mother, Lam placed heritage centrally in his work. Early in his career, he associated with major figures such as Picasso, Matisse and Braque, and he was struck by their integration of African iconography. Although he greatly respected these European artists, the dissonance between their aesthetic choices and cultural experience was not lost on him—especially given the racism and exploitation that characterized Cuban society under the US-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Lam spent the rest of his career endeavoring to decolonize modernist art. From his early Surrealist works to his later preference for geometric abstraction, African sculpture and the Afro-Caribbean diaspora consistently informed his practice. Published for an exhibition at Pace, The Imagination at Work includes paintings, works on paper and rarely seen bronze sculptures, as well as a biography of Lam’s life and career by the Latin American art scholar and curator Michaëla de Lacaze Mohrmann, who made curatorial contributions to the gallery’s exhibition. Essays by scholars Alexander Alberro, Kaira Cabañas, Samantha A. Noël and Alexandra Chang also feature.
Published by Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University. Edited by Paula Schulze. Text by Dawn Ades, Edward Lucie-Smith, Curtis L Carter, Lowery Stokes Sims, Dawn Ades, Valerie J. Fletcher, Lou Laurin-Lam.
In the winter of 2007, Milwaukee's Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, organized and hosted the first American retrospective exhibition of Cuba's favorite Surrealist, Wifredo Lam (1902-1992). Lam's paintings craft Surrealist conjunctions from Cuban religious iconography--especially from tribal masks--and retrieve a suppressed Afro-Cuban culture that ultimately sets them apart from any movement. "With all my energy I sought to paint the drama of my country, but most of all to lend expression to the spirit of Negro man, the beauty of Negro plastic art," he once declared. This exhibition catalogue celebrates the role that North American museums, galleries and private collectors have played in bringing about a renaissance of interest in Lam's art. It particularly addresses the role of Lam's Afro-Cuban ethnicity in the development of his unusual hybridized vocabulary, a blend of Paris School, Surrealist and Afro-Cuban aesthetics. All of these issues are raised in essays by an impressive line-up of scholars, including Dawn Ades, Edward Lucie-Smith, Lou Luarin-Lam (Wifredo's widow), Curtis L. Carter, Valerie Fletcher and Lowery Stokes Sims. Wifredo Lam in America features over 60 representative drawings and paintings from North American collections.
PUBLISHER Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 9.25 x 10 in. / 160 pgs / 77 color / 13 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/1/2008 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 89
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780945366225TRADE List Price: $35.00 CDN $40.00
Wifredo Lam in North America