Wifredo Arcay (1925-1997) - Zonder titel

Rare painting by the Cuban painter Wifredo Arcay. It is an oil on panel painting. Signed at the bottom right. The dimensions are 73.5 x 53.5 cm.

Provenance

Private collection Havana, Cuba
Sarracino Gallery, Coral Gables, Florida, United States
ArtCurial Postwar and Contemporary Art auction December 7, 2022, lot 605

Wifredo Arcay
Wifredo Arcay (born 1925 in Havana, Cuba – died 1997 in Paris, France) belonged to the postwar generation of the École de Paris as a painter, muralist, and printmaker. Born in Cuba and educated at the Academia de San Alejandro in Havana, Arcay arrived in 1949 with a scholarship to Paris. He quickly assimilated into the milieu of post-Cubist abstraction and studied with Edgard Pillet and Jean Dewasne in their Atelier d’art abstrait. In 1951, at the invitation of André Bloc, the influential editor of the magazine Art d’Aujourd’hui, Arcay established a studio in Bloc’s villa in Meudon, where he mingled with prominent figures from the historic avant-garde such as Jean Arp, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, and Fernand Léger.

Although he was known as a graphic artist, Arcay painted only in the 1950s and 1960s. He sent works to the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles (1951–54) and regularly to Cuba. He exhibited as part of the Cuban delegation at the São Paulo Biennale (1955) and often at Galería Color-Luz in Havana, a pioneering gallery for geometric abstraction. As a member of both the constructivist Groupe Espace, founded by Bloc Québécois and Félix Del Marle in 1951, and the short-lived Cuban group Los Diez Pintores Concretos (1959–61), Arcay embodied the rich diversity and internationalism of postwar abstraction.