Wifredo Lam

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above)
Private Collection, Paris

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Lam Paintings, 1942, n.n.

Gérard Xuriguéra, Wifredo Lam, Paris, 1974, illustrated p. 21
Max-Pol Fouchet, Wifredo Lam, Paris, 1976, illustrated p. 229
Lucien Curzi, Wifredo Lam, Bologne, 1978, illustrated p. 8
‘Wifredo Lam’, XXe siècle, no. 52 (special edition), Paris, July 1979,  illustrated p. 108
Wifredo Lam and his Contemporaries 1938-1952 (exhibition catalogue), New York, 1992, illustrated p. 33
Lou Laurin-Lam, Wifredo Lam. Catalogue raisonné of the painted work, Lausanne, 1996, vol. I : 1923-1960, no.42.53, illustrated p. 305

There are artist's pinholes along the edges, visible flattened creases and a slight waviness, inherent to the artist's practice of working in gouache on paper before laying the sheet down on canvas. The adhesion between the sheet and the canvas is sound however there is some distortion in the four corners where air pockets seem to have formed. There are some traces of glue near the left edge and some scattered fly spots. This work remains in good condition.
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La Langue maternelle(whose title was apparently invented by André Breton) is one of a series of large format gouaches completed by Lam in Havana in the summer of 1942, a year after his return to his homeland. It had been 18 years since he had last returned to Cuba. His fortunate and decisive encounter with the great Créole poet Aimé Césaire had convinced him to renounce the idea of taking exile in the United States in order to retrace his lost Afro-Cuban roots, and through them forge a new artistic identity. It was thus by studying ancient rites such as Voodoo and Santeria that Lam discovered a wondrous aesthetic universe that had not interested him during his time in Paris in the 1930s but that the first generation of Surrealists (in the 1920s) had desperately striven for through sleep experiments, hypnosis and automatic writing.

From 1942 onwards, Lam’s painting moved towards a return to itself as well as an exploration of new forms. The vegetable and animal kingdoms invade each other, differences between male and female, object and creature, colour and transparency all blur to herald the arrival of a new age, magnificently symbolised by La Jungle, the masterpiece Lam began in late 1942.

La Langue maternelle, a hybrid maternity scene in which the figures of the mother and child form a single body, conveys the same hope of a unifying force that can reconcile the past and the future. It was painted in September 1942, after the visit of Alfred Barr to Cuba (leading to the purchase of several of the artist’s works for MoMA’s collection) and before Wifredo Lam’s first solo retrospective at Pierre Matisse’s gallery in New York, where this work was of course exhibited.