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Apostroph' Apocalypse [#6626]
Author: Wifredo Lam (Lithographs)
Year: 1967
Medium: acquatint on Japanese paper
Size: 20 x 31 1/2 inches
Inventory No: 07184
Price: $
AVAILABLE
Illustrated in Wifredo Lam: Oeuvre Gravé et
Lithographié, Catalogue Raisonné, Musée de
Gravelines, France, 1993, page 91, no. 6626.
Illustrated in IMPORTANT CUBAN ARTWORKS, Volume
Twenty, Cernuda Arte, Coral Gables, Florida, 2023, page 37.
Wifredo Lam's remarkable suite of prints,
Apostroph'Apocalypse, exemplifies his most
audacious printmaking work.
The series was conceived as an art book,
created in collaboration with the avant-garde
writer Gherasim Luca during the mid-1960s,
amid rising global nuclear tensions.
Lam’s draftsmanship reached new heights, reimagining
his iconic human-horse hybrids as weaponized phantoms
soaring through negative space – sensuous, vivid, and
surreal. Beyond the mere assuredness of the line, works
from this series have an uncanny texture and color.
The distinctive shades are the product of a technique
created by Wifredo Lam in collaboration with renowned
printmaker Giorgio Upiglio in Milan, which allowed Lam to
draw directly on plates coated with powdered pigment.
Only 25 copies of Lam's hand-signed and numbered
prints from this series, produced on Japanese paper,
exist. These individually signed and numbered Japanese
paper editions have become among the artist’s most
coveted prints. Lam's 14 plates from Apostroph’Apocalypse,
executed in a bold and experimental process, have graced
esteemed institutions like the Centre Pompidou Paris;
National Library, Paris; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm;
Villa Medici, Rome; Palazzo della Permanente, Milan;
Yokohoma Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan; Fine Arts
Central Academy, Beijing; Institute of Fine Arts, Hong Kong;
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona;
Musée du dessin et de l’estampe Original, Gravelines, France;
and the Asian Art Archives, among many others.
NICO HOUGH
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