Source: WTL photograph© of the canvas in the monumental Wilfredo Lam exhibition in 2016 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.
Image: "Composición I" (1930). Oil on canvas; in a private collection. For a comparison of this image with another reproduction of it, see: => Lam 4a.
Comments: In Spain in 1927, young Spanish intellectuals and artists who had begun a movement or group they called the Generación de 27 (Generation of 1927). These avant garde artists introduced Lam to a uniquely Spanish version of Surrealism, which, in Spain, was inspired by the Spanish baroque art and poetry of the 17th century. The work on this page shows signs of Lam's exhuberant creativity within the parameters of this modern Spanish style. Note, for example, the typical baroque use of chiaroscuro (sharp contrast between light and dark), the surrealist hybridity of a sensual female figure in the lower right foreground on a background of jagged stairs, kayaks suspended in a black lake, dimunitive and faceless sailors, (perhaps) Spanish-style mountains in the upper right background, and the emerging and reflected moon that casts a ghostly light and also symbolizes the female element.
Humanities Question: What is your reaction/evaluation to this painting?