1942

The Spirit of Morning

Cuban, 1902 - 1982

Wifredo Lam was a native Cuban of Spanish, African, and Chinese descent who worked primarily in Europe and the United States and became associated with Surrealism in the late 1930s. Lam’s attraction to the voodoo magic and witchcraft aspects of Afro-Cuban religious practices (his godmother was a healer in the Santería religion) paralleled the Surrealist fascination with the ritual cultures of non-Western, often colonial, lands. As in this haunting image of a masked figure clutching a strange bird, Lam welcomed the notions of myth, metamorphosis, and prophecy into his works.