Wifredo Lam, real name Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla (born December 2, 1902 in Sagua la Grande, Cuba; died September 11, 1982 in Paris), was a Cuban, later French surrealist painter and graphic artist. His father was Chinese and his mother of Congolese and Cuban descent.
Lam moved to Havana in 1916 and studied at the Havana School of Art from 1918 to 1923. In 1923 he emigrated to Spain and attended the Madrid School of Art. In 1938 he moved to Paris, where Pablo Picasso introduced him to the circle around André Breton. In 1940 he fled to Marseille and in 1941, along with some Surrealist friends, to Martinique, where he was briefly interned. After a return to Cuba in 1942 due to the war and an extended stay in New York between 1947 and 1952, as well as stays between Cuba and Paris, he ended his life in the French capital in 1982.
Wifredo Lam’s powerful painting is closely associated with the Santería cult, as it seems to evoke Caribbean-African spirits and forms in a wildly dance-like manner.