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cuba republicconcept:movement latin american surrealism

The Jungle

Gouache on paper mounted on canvas by Wifredo Lam, 1943. A dense tropical forest populated by hybrid figures merging human, animal, and plant forms, drawing on Afro-Cuban mythology (Santería/Regla de Ochá Yoruba traditions), Picasso's fragmentation of form, and Surrealist spatial dislocation. Painted in Havana after Lam's return from Europe, the work is simultaneously a celebration of Afro-Cuban spiritual culture and a critique of colonial exploitation of Cuba. Held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Scholarly Significance

Wifredo Lam's The Jungle — Cuban/Surrealist masterwork; BFA pioneer: full Panofsky iconography (African/Caribbean religious syncretism + Surrealist program) and critical reception evolution.

Notes

  • ·Painted in Havana after Lam's return from Europe. Synthesizes his studies with Picasso, Afro-Cuban Santería iconography, and colonial critique.
  • ·The figures are hybrid entities (people, birds, plants), evoking both fertility and resistance.
  • ·André Breton wrote the preface to Lam's Havana exhibition catalogue (1942), introducing him to the international Surrealist canon.
  • ·The sugar cane stalks framing the composition reference Cuba's colonial plantation economy and the slavery that built it.