Source: WTL© digitized academic images from Wilfredo Lam; Imagining New Worlds. Ed. Elizabeth T. Goizueta. Boston: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2014, 93-94.
Images: Both works are by Wilfredo Lam. The image on the left, from 1926, is titled "Campesino [el abuelo Joaquín / Paysan de Castille]." It is done in pencil on paper. It is in a private collection. The image on the right, from 1927, is titled "Campesina castellana." It, too, is done in pencil on paper and is in a private collection.
Comments: Lam went to Madrid, Spain, in 1923 to study under the right-wing curator of the famous Spanish art museum, the Museo del Prado, but he also made friends with young, experimental Spanish artists. He lived in Spain from 1923 to 1938. At the Prado, which is a museum that focuses on great European art works from the Middle Ages through the early 19th century. He works in the 20s were post-Impressionist with a certain Spanish approach to early modern art, but not yet Cubist. In other words, in Spain, Lam learned the traditional craft of artistic painting. In 1929, he married Eva Piriz; tragically, she and their son died oftuberculosis in 1931. During his fifteen years in Spain, he travelled throughout Spain, where he came in contact with Spanish peasants and their opppressed and hard life, and experience that influenced his leftist social and political views and that certified him in his readings in Marxist theory and ideology.
Images: Both works are by Wilfredo Lam. The image on the left, from 1926, is titled "Campesino [el abuelo Joaquín / Paysan de Castille]." It is done in pencil on paper. It is in a private collection. The image on the right, from 1927, is titled "Campesina castellana." It, too, is done in pencil on paper and is in a private collection.
Humanities Questions: (A) What is your reaction/evaluation to these two works done one year apart when Lam was young? (B) What techniques does Lam use to depict, respectively, a rural Spanish peasant man and woman? (C) What do you think about the colorin in these works?