142. The Jungle. Wilfredo Lam. 1943 CE Gouache on paper mounted on canvas.

• Form
  • Crescent-shaped faces suggest African masks and the god Elegua
  • Rounded backs, thin arms and legs, pronounce hands and feet
  • Long vertical lines suggest sugarcane, which is grown in fields, not jungles.
• Content
  • Cuban-born artist whose career took him to Europe and the United States
  • The artist was interested in Cuba’s mixture of Hispanic and African cultures
  • This work was “intended to communicate a psychic state”
  • The work addresses the history of slavery in colonial Cuba
  • Influences include African sculpture; Cubist works; Surrealist
  • The painting contrasts a Cuban landscape with a tourist image of Cuba as a tropical paradise