Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Paris
Sale: Christies, New York, Important Latin American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, May 18 1992, lot 36, illustrated in color

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Group Show, 1970-1971
Paris, Galerie Fabien Boulakia, Wifredo Lam, September-October, 1985, illustrated in color
New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Wifredo Lam and his Contemporaries 1938-1952, 1992, p. 116, n. 27, illustrated in color

"Wifredo Lam", Cimaise, n. 177, Paris, 1985, p. 5, illustrated in color
Lou Laurin-Lam, Wifredo Lam: Catalogue Raisonné of the Painted Work, Volume I, 1923-1960, Lausanne, 1996, p. 362, n. 44.77

There are pinholes on all corners. The colors are bright and vibrant. The lower right corner has been repaired and there is a possible loss to the lower part of the right edge. There are 2 ¼ in. repaired tears on the right side of the lower edge. There is a larger repaired tear 3 ¾ in. extending from the lower left corner. Overall, the work is in very good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Painted in the same mode as Sur les Traces (lot 17), this painting demonstrates how Lam utilized his open-form stippled technique in color. This can be seen as earlier as 1943 in the enigmatic Untitled [Ñañigo] which features a drummer clad in the conical mask and elaborately ruffled and raffia-ed costume of the figure known as a "diablito" in Afro-Cuban parlance. Even more so than in Sur les Traces the conglomerate of this composition is mysterious. The beings that emerge from the blurry effects of the stippled color and form resemble variously underwater creatures all mouth and eyes, inverted humanoids with horse-shoe-shaped heads. One of the creatures has several sprigs of an unidentified plant extending from its head at the lower edge of the composition in the center. Various vessels and containers hold what could be sprouting bulbs or candles whose blooms or flames are halo-ed in white and which morph into orifices of other beings scarcely perceived in the ensemble. A stalk of some superannuated palm stretches off to the right from the concentration of forms at the left hand side of the compositions which i💎nclude another stalk with four leafed branched, a section of cane stalk extending from a head above a candle flame.

What Lam may be representing in compositions such as this one and Untitled [Ñañigo]is the physical experience of Afro-Cuban spirits and entities inhabiting the vegetation of the Cuban countryside, known variously as "el monte," "la selva," La maleza," or "la brousse"--all of which were the themes of many of Lam's compositions after the mid- 1940s. The in♎terchangability of these forms and the vegetational ambiance in🗹 which they are situated advance Lam's sense of hybrid imagery to the next level. The specificity of the designation of the vegetation cautions us about primitivist generalizations that often accompany notions of the generic "tropics" where even Lam's Cuban-inspired "Jungle" would be an anachronism.

Lowery Stokes Sims