ABSTRACT
Several scholars have argued that Wifredo Lam’s work also aligns with Aime Cesaire’s agenda: Robert Linsley proposed that Lam is “the painter of Negritude,” and Lowery Stokes Sims that his art is “comparable to the concept of Negritude that impelled the poetry and politics of Aime Cesaire and Leopold Senghor.” Unfortunately, Lam made inconsistent statements. Although he advocated “bringing the Black experience into art,” he also voiced disagreement “with the doctrine of Negritude. In the end, the real issue of history is not race, but class.” But Marxism and Negritude were strange bedfellows. Though Cesaire joined the Communist Party to combat racism and represented Martinique at the French General Assembly under its banner, Lam’s disavowal of Negritude, and claim that class constituted the real social question, is explainable by his reluctance to alienate the Castrist administration—not as a sincere rejection of Negritude.
