Adam and Eve 1969

Wifredo Lam painted "Adam and Eve" using oil on canvas, and it’s like he was wrestling with the Garden of Eden in his own way. Look at the muted palette, these ochres and greens laid down in thin layers. It feels like a world half-formed, still in the making. I'm drawn to the figure on the left with the ladder-like torso. It's such an odd combination of machine and living thing, like something from a strange dream. The brushwork here is delicate, almost tentative, which gives it this haunting presence. Lam often combined elements of his Cuban heritage with surrealist ideas, and you can see that tension here. It reminds me of some of the biomorphic forms you see in the work of Roberto Matta, another artist who was thinking about how to represent the inner life through abstract shapes. Ultimately, it’s a conversation about what it means to be human, or something other than.