Wifredo Lam and The 1940s Paris Art Scene

African Arts, Winter, 2002 by Judith Betthelheim

I wish to clarify some information concerning the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam in Bennetta Jules-Rosette's article "Musee Dapper: New Directions for a Postcolonial Museum" (Summer 2002). Caption 7 on page 25 states that Lam was part of the Parisian avant-garde scene of the 1940s. The artist, however, did not spend the '40s in France. He arrived in Paris in 1938, and in 1940, as much of the city, and, indeed, much of France, was falling to the Vichy government, he and many other artists, intellectuals, Jews, and freedom fighters left Paris for Marseilles.

In 1941 he left Marseilles for the Caribbean. Among others on this voyage were Claude Levi-Strauss and Andre Breton. (Levi-Strauss wrote about the trip in "Tristes Tropiques.") In 1942, after stops in Martinique, where he met Aime and Suzanne Cesaire, and the Dominican Republic, Lam finally landed in Havana. In Havana he associated with the ethnologist and folklorist Lydia Cabrera, who often titled his paintings, and the author and journalist Alejo Carpentier. Lam accompanied them as they attended many Afro-Cuban religious rituals.

He was in Havana from 1942 to 1952, taking important side trips to Haiti, in 1944 and for six months in 1945-46. In Haiti he continued his relationship with Breton, who arranged a Lam exhibition in Port-au-Prince in 1946, and began a friendship with the French cultural attache to Haiti, Pierre Mabille. Mabille took Lam and Breton to Vodou ceremonies and wrote some important texts on Lam's work. In 1945 the artist had an exhibition in Paris and briefly visited Picasso in the south of France in 1946. Lam's Parisian dealer, Pierre Loeb, did visit the artist in Cuba during this period, and through Loeb he had several exhibitions at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York City in the 1940s. Lam did not move back to Paris until 1952.

I would argue that the artist's association with leading intellectuals in Havana and Port-au-Prince seriously influenced his art production during the decade of the '40s, as did his friendship with the Cesaires. Although it is true that Loeb was able to bring to Havana some of Lam's collection of African art, I would also argue that much of the artist's work during this period was influenced by Afro-Cuban and Haitian culture, not African.

Judith Bettelheim

Professor of Art History

Department of Art

San Francisco State University

San Francisco, California

Response to Bettleheim!

Judith Bettelheim's note on Wifredo Lam is very informative. The artist's years in Havana were indeed crucial to his work. The Musee Dapper staff, however, chose to focus on Lam as part of their new interest in Black Paris and the African diaspora. They deliberately emphasized the African themes in his work, which were clearly filtered through his Caribbean background and his European experience. Bettelheim's note provides a new perspective on and support for the Musee Dapper's innovative diasporic project.

Bennetta Jules-Rosette

Professor of Sociology

University of California, San Diego