Modern painting as decolonization

»Lam’s visionary commitment to making his painting an ‘act of decolonization,’ as he put it, forever changed modern art«, explains Christophe Cherix, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. »He insisted on placing diasporic culture at the heart of modernism—not as a peripheral influence, but as central, a generative force.« Cuban painter Wilfredo Lam (1902–1982) spent most of his life in Spain, France, and Italy. His work combines surrealist and cubist approaches with his own perspective and Afro-Caribbean spiritual and political beliefs. The result was a unique oeuvre that spread a progressive view of social justice in Europe in the early 20th century. From 1961 onwards, Lam lived in Italy, where he also worked in sculpture, ceramics, and printmaking. The major retrospective Wilfredo Lam: When I Don't Sleep, I Dream at the Museum of Modern Art in New York features over 130 works of art, offering a comprehensive overview of the artist's creative output from the 1920s to the 1970s. The exhibition will be on view in New York from November 10, 2025, to April 11, 2026.

Wilfredo Lam is considered one of the most innovative artists of the modern era, whose works are directed against colonialism and racism and are still highly significant today. His most famous painting is La jungla (The Jungle) (1942-43), which has been in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art since 1945 and was controversially received when it was first presented to the public in 1943. The painting focuses on the Caribbean landscape and slavery, but also on the fluid transition between physical and spiritual space. The exhibition also features Grande Composition (Large Composition) (1949), which marked a turning point in the artist's work: his color palette became darker in order to depict undefined spaces, and Lams' later experiments with abstraction are hinted at here for the first time. The picture is being shown publicly for the first time in over 60 years.