Wifredo Lam: The Imagination At Work

Exhibition at Pace Gallery, New York, 10 November - 18 December 2021

Best known for his large-scale paintings that reference modernist aesthetics and Afro-Cuban imagery, Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) built his career around themes of social injustice, spirituality and rebirth. He was close to the Surrealists, who recognised him as one of their own, and to Picasso, and was also involved with the CoBra movement.

Published on the occasion of the Pace Gallery exhibition, this book examines the formal and thematic complexities of the Cuban artist's paintings and sculptures. Highlighting the radical nature of the Cuban artist's syncretic visual language, it traces the evolution of his practice and how he challenged the Eurocentrism of modernism.

Various essays offer contemporary analyses of the work of this dynamic 20th-century figure, highlighting the social and political contexts in which Lam created his art, as well as the cultural and religious sources that inspired his practice. In addition to reproductions of Lam's rarely seen paintings, works on paper, and bronze sculptures, this catalogue includes a detailed chronology of the artist's life.