Wifredo Lam La ventana I (The Window) 1935

Wifredo Lam is one of the most renowned artists of the vanguard movement that emerged in Cuba during the 1920s. Like many of their Latin American contemporaries, the first generation of Cuban modernists moved, to Europe – Spain and France in particular, to immerse themselves in the new formal and conceptual styles of the time. Lam painted La Ventana, I, in Spain soon after the artist lost his first wife and child to tuberculosis. During a period marked by illness, depression and a search for his own identity as an artist, Lam produced several renditions of this scene over a period of a year, varying only in perspective and color. Stylistically, the work reflects the early influence of Matisse: the simple dark lines and contours that outline the cathedral structure and urban buildings rendered in the background; the flat planes, simplification of forms and off-centered perspective are compositional elements drawn from the fauves and post-impressionists of the early twentieth-century modern movements. The muted blue and gray tones may also reflect the artist’s state of mind during this difficult period. In the 1940s and later, Lam combined Afro-Cuban motifs and the deep green hues of the Caribbean with the fragmentation and multidimensionality characteristic of Cubism and Surrealism.

Identification

Title

La ventana I (The Window)

Production Date

1935

Object Number

2012.62

Credit Line

Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Jorge M. Pérez

https://www.pamm.org/en/artwork/2012.62

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Physical Qualities

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

38 1/8 x 30 inches

Visual Description

La ventana I by Wilfredo Lam is a painting from 1935. It is made of oil paint on canvas. It measures roughly three feet tall by two and a half feet wide. It is hung in portrait orientation, meaning its shortest side runs parallel to the ground. The painting depicts still life, a genre of art that uses simple objects to symbolize a transient moment or a deeper meaning. The painting is primarily monochromatic, meaning it is painted using mostly one color with various tones. Starting from the center, a door frame is open and opens to a balcony with a view of a city. The door frame is arched and painted light blue. To the right of the curved frame is a partial view of the door that would enclose the open frame. It is swung inside and against the wall. The door’s visible top half is covered with a quatrefoil pattern that is light blue and yellow. The bottom half of the window-like opening depicts a small balcony enclosed with black ironwork. The balcony is made of green and blue tiles. The black ironwork is made of thin vertical bars and an ornate base made of spirals. The view of the city consists of what appear to be two or three buildings. The first is a façade with two yellow window frames visible through the bars of the ledge. The building is painted light blue, teal, and grey-blue. The following section behind it is the top of a building. It is painted dark grey-blue with a dark grey chimney top. Behind it there is what appears to be a church steeple. The church has an arched window toward its peak and a circular window underneath it. It is painted light blue and grey. The sky behind the church is blue with no clouds. Back inside the room, the left-hand side of the composition features a wall with a cream-colored polka dot pattern that is outlined by a blue and rectangular frame. To the bottom right of the composition there is a circular table with a small circular tabletop. On the table rests a dark blue cup or vase with a flower arrangement inside of it. The flowers are white with green leaves.

Wifredo Lam