Narrator, Marlin Ramos: When Germany invaded France at the beginning of World War II, Lam was forced to flee again.
The Artist’s Son, Eskil Lam: The Nazi troops are not far from Paris, and he takes one of the last trains, and it was total chaos.
Marlin Ramos: Lam made it to Marseille, a city in the South of France. There, he spent time with artists and writers associated with the Surrealism movement, including its founder André Breton.
Eskil Lam: The Surrealists around Breton meet every weekend, and they do these games and collective drawings.
Marlin Ramos: Some of the collective drawings Lam made with his friends are on this wall. Lam relished this opportunity to collaborate with other artists. He said:
Wifredo Lam (Voice Actor): “I was impressed by the poetic aspect. . . . a great combat for creation . . . we worked as a group for almost a year. It was the period of . . . many inventions.”
Marlin Ramos: Lam never defined himself as a Surrealist, but the movement opened up new ways of seeing the world, and allowed him, as he said, to “free ourselves from our worries and fears.” At the same time, Lam also recognized that he had first encountered surreal ways of seeing the world growing up in the Caribbean.
Here's Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons:
Artist, María Magdalena Campos-Pons: In Cuba, we don't call it Surrealism. It's realism. It's your reality. There is something about the poetic imagination that in Latin America, is everyday life.
Artist, Rashid Johnson: An artist like Wifredo Lam, being an artist of color, being an outsider, he had to be a dreamer. He had to think beyond what the potential limitations were. The surreal can be a tool for political exchange, for philosophical exchange, and for spiritual investment.