Lam and André Breton During the early years of his career, Lam associated with major figures in the European avant-garde, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and André Breton. Lam cultivated a friendship with Breton, who was a writer, poet, and leader of the surrealist movement, and the two figures traveled together in the Caribbean and Latin America during and after World War II. Lam was particularly intrigued by the automatist modes of artmaking proselytized by Breton and other surrealists. Breton, in turn, was struck by Lam’s fluid and inventive formal style, and he asked the artist to illustrate his poem “Fata Morgana,” which was published as a book in color in 1941. (Only six copies were printed before the publication was censored by the Vichy regime.) Lam’s vibrant contributions to the publication can be understood as precursors of the iconic hybrid figures of his later work. On view in a vitrine in Wifredo Lam: The Imagination at Work is a 1985 limited-edition reprint by Pasionala Ediciones, Buenos Aires that was translated into Spanish by Alejandro Puga. Only 100 copies of this rare black-and-white Spanish edition exist today. Lam and Édouard Glissant Martinican writer and theorist Édouard Glissant is known for his novels, essays, and poems that examine the legacy of colonialism and slavery. His writings on “relational poetics” underscore the complexities and nuances of Caribbean identity, culture, and history. Glissant’s 1955 poetry collection La Terre inquiète (The Troubled Land), which is included in a vitrine in Pace’s exhibition, features lithographs by Lam. La Terre inquiète (The Troubled Land) was published by the Parisian Galerie du Dragon, where Lam exhibited his work. The artist’s abstract works in the book are in dialogue with the geometric, hybridized forms that make up his paintings. Notably, Glissant’s work was presented in concert with pieces by the Cuban writer and anthropologist Lydia Cabrera in the 2018–19 Americas Society exhibition Lydia Cabrera and Édouard Glissant: Trembling Thinking in New York. (That show also featured work by modern and contemporary artists, including Lam.) Cabrera, an expert on Afro-Cuban spirituality, was another associate of Lam, and the artist created illustrations for her Spanish translation of Martinican writer Aimé Césaire’s seminal text Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. Lam and Alejo Carpentier A brochure for the 1982 traveling solo exhibition Homage to Wifredo Lam 1902–1982 featured an essay on the artist by Alejo Carpentier, a famed Cuban writer and musicologist. Carpentier wrote that Lam, who was his longtime friend, belonged “to all the lands of America.” The writer also describes links between the artist’s work and the “secret forms of American nature,” which he characterizes as “agitated—still capable of manifesting itself in the febrile commotions of Genesis.” Carpentier’s essay, which predates the 1982 presentation at the Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid, can be found in one of the vitrines in Pace’s exhibition. Join our mailing list for updates about our artists, exhibitions, events, and more. Subscribe About Staff Careers Press Terms Privacy © Pace Gallery Instagram opens in a new window Facebook opens in a new window Twitter opens in a new window WeChat opens in a new window Youtube opens in a new window Weibo opens in a new window Artsy opens in a new window