Before It's Gone: Cleveland Museum Of Art's A Graphic Revolution

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s A Graphic Revolution: Prints and Drawings in Latin America offers insight into Latin American culture and heritage using modern art and surrealism. With 10 new acquisitions from Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela from the latter half of the 20th century, the exhibit examines the artists’ relationship with their identities during a time of political chaos. Before the exhibit closes Nov. 29, we talk to associate curator Britany Salsbury about one must-see piece.

“Untitled” by Wilfredo Lam
Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam worked alongside Pablo Picasso and other surrealist artists in Paris. This untitled piece depicts three whimsical, geometrically shaped birdlike figures flying in various positions through an indeterminate space. “The things that the surrealists had been thinking about in Paris was like the subconscious imagination, fantasy and the sort of religion that he had grown up with,” says Salsbury. “So he was trying to connect between both his own culture and the one that he had experienced in Paris.”

According to Salsbury, drawing on paper offers a sense of privacy and intimacy to the artist that enables one to fully realize their ideas in a direct sense, and Lam’s works suggest he might have had more influence on other artists than originally thought. “I spent some time sort of waiting for the right drawing from that exact period that would really show the mutual influence that he had with what we think of as the canonical artists of modern art,” says Salsbury.