The Museum of Modern Art will host the most extensive retrospective exhibition (held in the United States) devoted to the iconic Cuban artist Wifredo Lam. “Wifredo Lam: When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream” will be on view at MoMA from November 10, 2025, through April 11, 2026. [Many thanks to Aica Caraïbe du Sud for their article “Une retrospective Wifredo Lam au MOMA,” 9 January 2025.]
Description: The Museum of Modern Art announces Wifredo Lam: When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream, the most extensive retrospective devoted to the artist in the United States, on view at MoMA from November 10, 2025, through April 11, 2026. Spanning the six decades of Lam’s prolific career, the exhibition will present more than 150 rarely seen artworks from the 1920s to the 1970s—including paintings, large-scale works on paper, collaborative drawings, illustrated books, prints, ceramics, and archival material—with key loans from the Estate of Wifredo Lam, Paris. The retrospective will reveal how Lam—an artist born in Cuba who spent most of his life in Spain, France, and Italy—came to embody the figure of the transnational artist in the 20th century and forged a unique visual style at the confluence of European modernity, African diasporic culture, and Caribbean traditions.
[Organized by organized by Christophe Cherix, The Robert Lehman Foundation, Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints and Beverly Adams, The Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art; with Damasia Lacroze and Eva Caston, Curatorial Assistants.]
Aica Caraïbe du Sud writes:
The exhibition will explore how Lam, born in Cuba but having lived abroad for most of his life, came to represent the idea of a “transnational artist,” his practice being influenced by the confluence of European modernity, African diaspora culture, and Caribbean traditions. Born in Sagua La Grande in 1902, Lam later emigrated to Madrid to study painting. The exhibition will feature his early works in Spain, such as La Guerra Civil (1937), his first monumental work on paper mounted on canvas.
In 1938, Lam moved to Paris, where he met artists and writers such as Pablo Picasso and André Breton. Among his collaborative works, Lam produced a collection of drawings for Breton’s poetry collection Fata Morgana (1941), which are included in the MoMA survey.
Returning to Cuba in 1941, Lam created important works such as The Jungle (1942–1943), which references the tropical Caribbean landscape, with its history of sugar plantations and slavery. “Lam’s visionary commitment to making his painting an ‘act of decolonization,’ as he put it, changed modern art forever,” said Christophe Cherix, MoMA’s chief curator of drawings and prints.
This exhibition will be the largest Lam exhibition in the United States to date. It follows the Hong Kong retrospective, Homecoming, held earlier this year at the Asia Society, which paid tribute to his Cantonese roots. [. . .]
Excerpts translated by Ivette Romero. For the original article (in French), see https://aica-sc.net/2025/01/09/une-retrospective-wifredo-lam-au-moma/
[Shown above: Wifredo Lam. The Jungle, 1942-43. Oil on paper on canvas, 94 1/4 x 90 1/2 (239.4 x 229.9 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Inter-American Fund. © Wifredo Lam Estate, Adagp, Paris / ARS, New York 2025.]
The Museum of Modern Art will host the most extensive retrospective exhibition (held in the United States) devoted to the iconic Cuban artist Wifredo Lam. “Wifredo Lam: When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream” will be on view at MoMA from November 10, 2025, through April 11, 2026. [Many thanks to Aica Caraïbe du Sud for
