Wifredo Lam

About

Wifredo Lam was a Cuban artist born in Sagua la Grande, Cuba, in 1902, to a Chinese immigrant father and an Afro-Cuban mother with Congolese ancestry. He studied at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid starting in 1923, where he was exposed to European modernism. During the Spanish Civil War, he moved to Paris in 1938, befriending Pablo Picasso and André Breton, which immersed him in Cubism and Surrealism. Returning to Cuba in 1941 amid World War II, Lam developed his signature style blending Afro-Cuban spirituality, Santería elements, and surrealist techniques, creating hybrid figures that challenged colonial narratives and celebrated syncretic cultures.

Afro-Surrealism, blending modernist aesthetics with Afro-Cuban imagery, hybrid figures, and syncretic spiritual motifs