This beautifully illustrated book, the first monograph on Wifredo Lam since 1989, provides a comprehensive retrospective of the iconic Cuban artist’s life and work. With the quasquicentennial of his birth approaching, recent research and cataloging have deepened our understanding of Wifredo Lam (1902–1982) and his multifaceted contributions to 20th century art and politics.

Following a long journey that began in Spain, where Lam studied the great European painters—Bosch, Dürer, Velázquez and Goya—this book traces defining moments in his artistic evolution. Encounters with Picasso and Breton in Paris shaped his distinctive style, which existed at the heart of modernity, distinguished also by the influences of surrealism, Matisse, and African art.

Born in 1902 to a Chinese father and an African mother, Lam’s work draws from both European and Afro-Caribbean visual culture in a unique synthesis of his multicultural heritage and formulative studies. Forced to flee Paris in 1940 by the Nazi occupation, Lam took refuge in Marseilles before returning to Cuba, where his visual language evolved into a powerful tool for confronting the social and political injustices of the newly globalized world.

Through thoughtful interpretation of Lam’s body of work, author Jacques Leenhardt sheds light on the originality of his language, both symbolic and pictorial, and the evolution of visual art in the 20th century.