Fondation Giacometti

Wifredo Lam’s art is featured in major collections, with recent retrospectives in Paris, London, and Madrid highlighting its relevance to contemporary themes of origin and metamorphosis. In 1945, MoMA acquired his celebrated painting, La Jungle (1943). In 2026 they acquired Grande Composition (1949), restored La Jungle, and hosted an extraordinary retrospective, Wifredo Lam, When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream.
Lam’s work was celebrated early on by André Breton and Aimé Césaire and his paintings have been the objects of many studies. However, Lam dedicated also much of his creative life to create extraordinary print works, collaborating with writers like Aimé Césaire, René Char, Édouard Glissant and Ghérasim Luca. This talk explores his artist’s books and his influence on these poets.

Jean Khalfa is Trinity Professor Emeritus in French Studies, at Trinity College, Cambridge. He has widely published on philosophy, literature and aesthetics, and in particular on Michel Foucault and on Frantz Fanon. Among his recent books are Poetics of the Antilles: Poetry, History and Philosophy in the Writings of Perse, Césaire, Fanon and Glissant (Peter Lang, 2017). He has created the largest collection of French artist’s books in the UK at Trinity College’s Wren Library and in 2025 published Wifredo LAM – Livres d’artiste/ Artist’s Books (Jean-Michel Place). He has copublished with Robert JC Young an edition of Fanon’s collected literary, psychiatric and political writings, Alienation and Freedom (La Découverte, 2015, 2017, Bloomsbury, 2018, 2020). His edition of Foucault’s History of Madness (Routledge 2026) is the first scholarly edition of this major text. 

Image : Aimé Césaire & Wifredo Lam, “Que l’on présente son cœur au soleil”, Annonciation (1967-1982) © Wifredo Lam Estate