"Grande Composition was Lam's largest work, and he made it by painting onto paper with oil so thinned down that it appears semitranslucent. Note the bottom portion of the painting, where charcoal outlines delineate the three-toed feet belonging to a tailed figure with bulging breasts. That area of the canvas appears unfinished, but the work's incompleteness only enhances its eeriness. The work looks like a world coming into being."
"Rare are the shows that reveal a bona fide masterpiece to the public; the Museum of Modern Art's rich, fascinating Wifredo Lam retrospective is one of them. I'm not talking about his iconic 1942-43 painting La jungla (The Jungle), a landmark of the Surrealist movement that has been a prized possession of MoMA's since 1945. The real star here is Grande Composition (1949), a 14-foot-wide tangle of angular, elongated creatures that twist through each other."
Wifredo Lam's Grande Composition (1949) is a 14-foot-wide tangle of angular, elongated creatures painted with oil thinned to a semitranslucent wash on paper. Charcoal outlines at the bottom delineate three-toed feet of a tailed figure with bulging breasts; the seemingly unfinished lower area intensifies the work's eeriness and sense of a world forming. The painting was formerly in a Paris collector's apartment and was acquired by MoMA after years of negotiation led by director Christophe Cherix and curator Beverly Adams. Lam, Afro-Cuban with Chinese heritage, described his paintings as "an act of decolonization" and sought to relocate Black cultural objects within their own landscapes and contexts.
Read at ARTnews.com
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