JACQUELINE LAMBA – PAINTER, from 11th March to 22nd April 2023, at the Galerie Weinstein (San Francisco)

444, Clementina St,
San Francisco CA 94103

To mark its 30th anniversary, Weinstein Gallery is organising an exhibition titled ‘Jacqueline Lamba – Painter’. This is a retrospective of over forty paintings and works produced between 1927 and 1986. This exhibition will be Lamba’s first in a gallery in the United States since seventy-four years ago, when she exhibited at the Norlyst Gallery in New York.

Despite six decades of creating and exhibiting works of art, the woman who lived in the United States intermittently between 1941 and 1954 remains less well known as an artist than her dear friends Dora Maar and Frida Kahlo. History remembers her mainly as André Breton’s second wife and the ‘scandalous beauty’ who inspired his L’Amour fou, and neglects a body of work spanning more than sixty years and covering several styles and themes.

Jacqueline Lamba refused to be relegated to the role of muse, wife or mother. Her insatiable desire to paint and to have that desire recognised was her only concern. Independent, outspoken and knowing exactly what she wanted sometimes prevented her from getting what she wanted, but she persisted. At the end of her life, she lived in solitude, devoting her life almost religiously to her art, until she could no longer hold a pencil. She once wrote to a friend: ‘If you hear that I’m not painting, I’m dead.

In the current resurgence of attention to women artists, particularly those involved in Surrealism, Jacqueline Lamba is being reconsidered as an artist of reference for her importance and contributions, as evidenced by her inclusion in several recent museum exhibitions, including In Wonderland -The Surrealist Adventures of Artists in Mexico and the United States at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Fantastic Women. Surreal Worlds from Meret Oppenheim to Frida Kahlo at the Schirn Kunsthalle, and currently in Enchanted Modernity: Surrealism and Magic at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice and the Museum Barberini in Potsdam. In addition, the artist’s first monograph, published by the gallery and written by respected academic Dr Salomon Grimberg, will be released later this year.

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