Wilfredo Lam, Abstract, 1953

Wilfredo Lam (1902-1982) was a Cuban Modernist who spent a significant part of his life in Paris where he was befriended by Pablo Picasso, who introduced him to a wider circle of leading artists and writers, including André Breton and Joan Miró. Naturally, his work was influenced by a modernist style and he began to experiment with Cubist techniques. He was also interested in the Surrealists attitudes towards automatism and the subconscious. Despite Lam being a member of the Surrealist movement, he did not define himself as a Surrealist painter, stating that, ‘Surrealism gave me an opening, but I haven’t painted in a Surrealist manner’. Therefore, Lam as an artist has been difficult to define within a movement. It was his combining of movements, techniques and ideas that made his work important and were, arguably, a reflection of his own mixed heritage and unique life experience. Tate Modern staged a retrospective of Lam's work in 2017. There is also a centre dedicated to his work in Havana.