A Lam sold for $4.56 million [record] at Sotheby's auction

By Walker Simon

NEW YORK | Thu May 24, 2012 

(Reuters) - A painting by Cuban surrealist Wifredo Lam, named for an African Yoruba goddess also worshipped in the Caribbean, led Sotheby's strongest Latin American evening art sale ever on Wednesday night.
Setting an auction record for Lam, the 1944 "Ídolo (Oya/Divinité de l'Air et de la mort)," fetched $4.56 million from a South American collector, more than doubling the late artist's previous top market price.

"We were thrilled with the new record price achieved for Wifredo Lam, which was one of nine new artist records set during the Wednesday evening auction," said Axel Stein, head of Sotheby's Latin American art department.

Lam fused surrealism with santeria, which like Haiti's voodoo, borrows from the Yoruba pantheon. Within the painting, at least six of the santeria deities can be discerned, said Stein of the work, populated by human-animal hybrids.

An Afro-Cuban, Lam's godmother was a santeria priestess. But the artist began to explore the religion in his work after a 1940 trip to Haiti and Cuba with French surrealist leader Andre Breton. Lam died in 1982.  More >>