Cuban surrealist Wifredo Lam fetches record price |
Cuban surrealist Wifredo Lam fetches record price
BBC News
2012-05-24
A painting by Cuban surrealist artist Wifredo Lam fetched a record personal price at a Latin American art sale at auctioneers Sotheby’s in New York.
An unnamed South American collector paid $4.5m (£2.9m) for Lam’s 1944 Idol (Oya/Divinite de l’Air et de la mort), well above the $2m-3m guide price…
…But Diego Rivera’s 1939 painting Girl in Blue and White, considered the main attraction, remained unsold.
The work by the Mexican artist had been expected to sell at a price between $4m and $6m.
In contrast, Lam’s piece, which had been in private hands since 1947, sold for more than double the previous top price for his paintings.
An Afro-Cuban, Lam died in 1982 and was heavily influenced both by surrealism and by santeria, an Afro-Caribbean religion based on Yorùbá and Roman Catholic beliefs…
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Tags: BBC News, Cuba, Wifredo Lam, Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla