Wifredo Lam: When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 163345178X ISBN 13: 9781633451780

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2025

Synopsis

A sweeping retrospective of the innovative and influential Cuban artist, bringing his work into dialogue with new perspectives in art history

Over a career spanning six decades, Wifredo Lam radically expanded the purview of modernism. Born in Cuba, Lam spent most of his life in Spain, France, and Italy, and came to embody the figure of the transnational artist in the 20th century, forging a unique visual style at the confluence of European modernity and Caribbean and African diasporic cultures. The extent of his influence throughout the Black Atlantic is unrivaled as both a leading innovator and an anti-colonialist.

Published in conjunction with the most extensive retrospective devoted to the artist in the United States, Wifredo Lam: When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream brings together more than 150 works from his prolific career―including paintings, large-scale works on paper, collaborative drawings, illustrated books, prints, ceramics, and archival material. This landmark publication features extensive new photography; trenchant insights into Lam’s relationship to Surrealism, Négritude, and other literary, cultural, and poetic movements; and the first in-depth conservation analysis of Lam’s best-known painting, The Jungle (1942–43).

About this title

About the Author

Christophe Cherix is The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Beverly Adams is the Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA.

Anny Aviram is a Senior Paintings Conservator at MoMA.

Miriam Basilio is an Associate Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at New York University.

Roberto Cobas is a Curator at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana.

Terri Geis is the Co-Director of Masters of Fine Arts in Art and Media and Associate Professor of Arts at NYU Abu Dhabi.

Damasia Lacroze is a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA.

Laura Neufeuld is an Associate Paper Conservator at MoMA

María Elena Ortiz is Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Lowery Stokes Sims is an independent curator and art Historian.

Catherine Stephens is the Sally and Michael Gordon Conservation Scientist at MoMA.

Wifredo Lam (1902–1982) left his native Cuba at age 21 to pursue a career in painting. He studied first in Spain, where he fought in the Spanish Civil War, before moving to France in 1938. There he met artists and writers such as Pablo Picasso, André Breton, and the Surrealists. Fleeing the Nazi occupation, Lam returned to Cuba in 1941, where his work became increasingly experimental, both technically and in the development of his unique visual language. Returning to Europe in 1952, where he spent the remainder of his life, Lam expanded his material production into printmaking and ceramics, while continuing his visionary approach to painting, which he called “an act of decolonization.”

From the Back Cover

Published to accompany the first comprehensive cross-media retrospective of Cuban-born painter Wifredo Lam’s work in New York, this publication brings together over 150 rarely seen artworks from six decades of his prolific career, including paintings, works on paper, books, prints, ceramics, and archival material. A sweeping retrospective of the innovative and influential Cuban artist, bringing his work into dialogue with new perspectives in art history. Over a career spanning five decades, Wifredo L

Edition details

• Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 163345178X
• ISBN 13: 9781633451780
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Cherix Christophe, Adams Beverly