Existing comment:
Wifredo Lam The Jungle (La Jungla) 1943
Lam, who had spent three years working with the Surrealists in Paris, aimed for The Jungle to convey the haunting consequences of slavery and colonialism for his native island of Cuba. He depicted figures with crescent-shaped faces, recalling African or Pacific Islander masks, against a background of Cuban sugarcane fields. Cuba, one of the world's largest sugar exporters, had been colonized since the sixteenth century, and the Atlantic slave trade had brought more than a million Africans there as labor for the country's plantations. "I wanted with all my heart to paint the drama of my country," Lam wrote, "to disturb the dreams of the exploiters." |