(Cuba 1902–1982 Paris)
Imagine n. 4, 1964, oil on canvas, 85 x 110 cm

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist

We are grateful to Eskil Lam for confirming the authenticity and his kind assistance in cataloguing this work.

Provenance:
Private Collection, Milan
Galerie Baukunst, Cologne (label on the reverse)
Galleria Arte Borgogna, Milan (label and stamp on the reverse)
Private Collection, Lecco
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Milan, Galleria Arte Borgogna, Wifredo Lam, 1970, exh. cat. with ill.
London, Gimpel Fils Gallery, 6 – 24 October 1971
New York, Gimpel Gallery, December 1970 – January 1971
Zurich, Gimpel and Hanover Gallery, 27 February – 27 March 1971, Wifredo Lam, exh. cat. no. 6, with ill.
Cologne, Baukunst Galerie, Der Geist des Surrealismus, Albin Brunovski, Gemälde, Druckgraphik, Wifredo Lam, Oelbilder, November 1971–January 1972

Literature:
M.-P. Fouchet, Wifredo Lam, 1st ed., Poligrafa/Cercle d’Art, Barcelona/Paris, 1976, p. 122, no. 142, with ill.
M.-P. Fouchet, Wifredo Lam, 2nd ed., Poligrafa/Cercle d’Art, Barcelona/Paris, 1976, p. 126, no. 142, with ill.
Wifredo Lam, Prearo Editore, Milan 1992, Galleria Arte Borgogna, p. 41 with ill.
L. Laurin Lam, E. Lam, Wifredo Lam. Catalogue Raisonné of the Painted Work, Vol. II 1961–1982, Acatos, Lausanne 2002, p. 278, no. 64.15 with ill.

Wifredo Lam is the instigator of syncretic painting that combines Western modernism with African and Caribbean symbols. Despite coming into contact with many of the avant-garde movements of his time, he never allowed himself to be incorporated into any of them, thus creating a unique and original language.

The reason for the syncretism of his art is to be found in his personal story: he enlisted with the Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War, but was forced to flee to Paris on Franco’s victory in 1938. There he met André Breton, Joan Miró, Benjamin Péret and Pierre Mabille through his friend Picasso. Through them, he approached some of the main avant-garde movements: he experi-mented with Cubism and showed an interest in Surrealist automatism and in the exploration of the unconscious, even if he would later say ‘Surrealism gave me an opening, but I haven’t painted in a surrealist manner.’
The compositions created in those years are influenced by the trauma of the Spanish Civil War, which is reflected in the choice to represent large and chaotic groups of figures in motion, but also by the African art encountered in the French capital, whose influences are evident in the choice of simple motifs and geometric, stylised shapes.

A sojourn in his native Cuba at the beginning of the 1940s generated a deep feeling of despair at the conditions in which his homeland found itself, a feeling that led him to leave the Caribbean archipelago to return to Europe and settle in Paris in the early 1950s.
In this phase his works reach a maturity that brings them closer to abstract art: the compositions become larger and less dense, the colours are cold, the features tense and the forms, indebted to the Caribbean symbolism borrowed during his short stay in Cuba, are stylised; the background begins to fade, but without completely surrendering to non-figurative painting.

His later works, which include Image No. 4, are perhaps the most complex. In the small Ligurian town of Albissola Marina, where he settled between the 1950s and 1960s, the artist experimented with new expressive techniques in addition to painting, becoming more and more passionate about ceramics: the freedom offered by the processing of terracotta, where factors external to the creator’s will intervene, allows him to give different shape to his ideas. In the works of this period the figures become more hybrid and threatening, the backgrounds tend to the monochrome and details emerge with difficulty; the line dominates the figure and the compositions acquire a sharp character.