• Submitted by: admin
• Arts and Culture
• Europe
• International
• Paint and Sculpture
• 02 / 27 / 2007

The exhibit is made up by some 68 pieces, ranging from oil paintings, temperas, inks, charcoal drawings, collages and etchings to interesting lithographs, most of them of small and medium format made on paper and cardboard and that remained unpublished till 1993.

According to José Manuel Noceda Fernández, a Wifredo Lam researcher and expert who acted as organizer of the sample, "theyre works the artist kept for a long time in the intimacy of his studio, led without doubts by that special affinity and the inexplicable nexus towards them, something typical of creators relationship with certain segments of their production".

"Some of them were not even finished, because the author left them unfinished; theyre preparatory sketches or outlines according to major works, which confers them attraction too. As for the engravings, almost all are state tests foreseen for some series, that suffered design and colour modifications in the working process. Lam never managed to print certain copies in a serialized way, which almost turn them into originals".

To Noceda, the most significant thing of Intimate Cartography are pieces made in Spain 1937 within a very orthodox modernist style; the works of his stay in Paris and in Marseilles (1938-1941), emerged starting from his more direct contact with trends and movements from the Paris School and the African art; the Cuban works and the enviable collection of inks (1946-1947).

The exhibit also dedicates an important 32-painting collection to the '50s, time in which Lam was in his expressive peak and implied the formal conquests of the European avant-gardes.

Fruit of the collaboration between Cuba and Spain through the "Wifredo Lam" Contemporary Art Center and the National Council of Plastic Arts, this travelling exhibit has been previously shown in other European cities such as Brussels and Geneva.

Wifredo Lam is considered the most universal of all Cuban painters and his paintings form part of the collections of the Centre Pompidou and the MOMA Lisa, among other museums.

In his painting Surrealism merges with the Afro-Cuban cultural heritage and the exuberance of the Caribbean colour. The greater expression of this symbiosis is "La Jungla" (The Jungle), his paradigmatic work described by critics among the top 100 of the 20th century.

Source: CubaSi