Wifredo Lam in North America

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 the 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.