Wifredo Lam Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Wilfredo Lam (1902 - 1982) was born in Sagua la Grande (Cuba) in 1902, studied at the Escuela de bellas artes in Havana and then attended a painting academy in Madrid. His stay in Spain was one of the fundamental stages of his artistic career because he had the opportunity to study the great masters of the past, remaining particularly fascinated by the works of Bosch and Bruegel the Elder. Read the full biography

Wilfredo Lam (1902 - 1982) was born in Sagua la Grande (Cuba) in 1902, studied at the Escuela de bellas artes in Havana and then attended a painting academy in Madrid. His stay in Spain was one of the fundamental stages of his artistic career because he had the opportunity to study the great masters of the past, remaining particularly fascinated by the works of Bosch and Bruegel the Elder. In 1931 his wife and son died of tuberculosis and the painter concentrated obsessively on creating paintings with the subject of mothers and children; in this year he did not even shy away from political commitment and joined the republican forces in the fight against Franco. From 1938, he moved to Paris where he met artists of the caliber of Pablo Picasso and came into contact with the surrealist group whose magical and fantastic themes found fertile ground in Matta's mind. The artist, gifted with an extraordinary imagination already exercised since childhood, began to bring onto canvas those visions that he constructed as a child in the woods surrounding his hometown: mythical figures alternated with the vegetation which in the first paintings consisted of plantations of Cuban sugar cane. He was forced to leave the city with the arrival of German troops and took refuge in Marseille together with other surrealist painters such as Max Ernst, André Masson, André Breton and Victor Brauner. In 1954 he went to what later became his second home: Albissola. The small coastal town in fact transformed into a particularly prolific artistic melting pot, bringing together artists of the caliber of Fontana, Scanavino, Matta and Lam himself who set up a permanent studio here around the art of ceramics.