The Jungle
The Jungle. Wifredo Lam. 1943 C.E. Gouache on paper mounted on canvas. 1934 C.E. Wifredo Lam remains the most renowned painter from Cuba and The Jungle remains his best known work and an important painting in the history of Latin American art and the history twentieth-century modernism more broadly. Lam’s consciousness of Cuba’s socio-economic realities; his artistic formation in Europe under the influence of Surrealism; and his re-acquaintance with Afro-Caribbean culture. This remarkable collision resulted in the artist’s most notable work, The Jungle. The Jungle, currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, has an undeniable presence within the gallery: the cluster of enigmatic faces, limbs, and sugarcane crowd a canvas that is nearly an 8 foot square. Plays with perception. The artist haphazardly constructs the figures from a collection of distinct forms—crescent-shaped faces; prominent, rounded backsides; willowy arms and legs; and flat, cloddish hands...