“My painting is an act of decolonization.”
(Wifredo Lam)
A Surrealist Voice Rooted in the Spirit of the Caribbean
Wifredo Lam was a Cuban-born painter and graphic artist whose work fuses Surrealism, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and modernist abstraction into a unique and powerful visual language. Born in 1902 in Sagua La Grande, Cuba, to a Chinese father and a Congolese-Spanish mother, Lam drew deeply from his multicultural heritage and the rhythms of his homeland.
After studying in Madrid and engaging with European avant-garde circles, Lam moved to Paris in the late 1930s, where he formed close ties with Pablo Picasso, André Breton, and the Surrealist movement. Unlike many of his peers, however, Lam sought not only to explore the unconscious, but also to challenge colonial narratives and reclaim suppressed cultural identities through art.
His drawings and lithographs are filled with hybrid figures — half-human, half-animal, often reminiscent of Yoruba deities and Santería iconography. These works radiate a mystical intensity and speak to the intersection of myth, resistance, and modernism.
Lam’s art is both personal and political: it carries the spirit of the Surrealists, but it is grounded in the rituals, dreams, and struggles of the Caribbean and African diaspora. His graphic works remain among the most evocative and symbolically rich contributions to 20th-century Surrealism.