Live Auction 2173Latin American Sale
Christie’s roundel
Lot 28

Wifredo Lam (Cuban 1902-1982)

Oiseau sur la terre

Closed29 May 2009

Price Realised

USD 266,500

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Wifredo Lam (Cuban 1902-1982)
Oiseau sur la terre
signed and dated 'Wifredo Lam, 1954' (lower right) and dedicated 'POUR JIULIO CRIPPA AMITIE, LAM, PARIS 1957' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
19¾ x 24 in. (50.2 x 61 cm.)
Painted in 1954.

R. G. Crippa collection, Milan (1957).
Emil Najar collection, Jerusalem.
Sotheby's, Tel Aviv, 7 October 1996, lot 46 (illustrated in color).
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Specialist note

"The freedom to transpose and fragment, to construct scenarios which can combine humor and magic, springs from Lam's re-invention of Surrealism. If he was able, unlike the Surrealist themselves or Picasso, to speak from within the culture of the African-Caribbean, he was not restricted to it."

Dawn Ades, Wifredo Lam in North America, Marquette University, Milwaukee, 2007, p. 46.