The Jungle (Wifredo Lam)

The Jungle is a large painting in oil and charcoal on paper mounted on canvas, completed in 1943 by the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam shortly after his return to Cuba following years in Europe among the Surrealists. It depicts a dense thicket of stylized, hybrid human and plant figures with mask-like faces recalling African and Pacific carving traditions, set among towering sugarcane stalks that evoke Cuba's history of plantation slavery and the enduring presence of Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions such as Santeria. Acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1945, it is regarded as Lam's defining work, fusing the formal languages of Cubism and Surrealism with Afro-Caribbean subject matter largely excluded from the European art of his training.