The shadow and the light: When wifredo lam reinvented the cuban jungle
Night falls over Havana in 1942. In a studio in the Vedado district, a candle flickers between jars of dried gouache and sheets of yellowed paper. Wifredo Lam, his fingers stained with ochre and soot black, traces shapes that seem to emerge from the wall itself. Around him, batá drums resonate in the neighboring courtyard, their syncopated rhythms mingling with the rustling of dried banana leaves hanging from the ceiling. That evening, he is not painting. He is summoning. The figures taking shape under his brush are neither fully human nor fully vegetal—they are orishas, those Yoruba deities who crossed the Atlantic in the holds of slave ships to incarnate in the bodies and dreams of Cuban slaves. When he finally sets down his brush, The Jungle is born. A work that will upend modern art, not by imitating Picasso, but by surpassing him: where the Spanish master had plundered African masks to turn them into aesthetic props, Lam, for his part, resurrects the soul of Africa in the very guts of Cuba.
By Artedusa
••11 min readWhat no one knows yet is that this nearly two-and-a-half-meter canvas will become one of the most powerful manifestos of 20th-century art—a manifesto where Cubism meets sorcery, where geometric forms embrace possession dances, and where color itself becomes an act of resistance.
01The curse of the mixed-race man: an artist between two worlds
Wifredo Lam was born in 1902 in Sagua La Grande, a small sugar town in central Cuba, where the air smells of rum and molasses. His father, a Chinese immigrant who arrived in Cuba as a coolie, had made his fortune running a grocery store; his mother, Ana Serafina Castilla, was a mulatta with Congolese and Spanish roots. In this family where continents intersected, young Wifredo grew up between two fires: that of the Yoruba traditions his maternal grandmother, a former slave, passed down to him in secret, and that of Catholic Spain, which his father revered. "I was born in a country where magic is as real as sugarcane," he would later write.
At twenty, he left Cuba for Madrid, carrying in his luggage a scholarship and the dream of becoming a great painter. But 1920s Europe was not kind to mixed-race artists. At the San Fernando Academy, his teachers reproached him for his "savage colors" and his "overly exotic" subjects. When he exhibited for the first time, a Madrid critic wrote: "This young man has talent, but he would do better to paint bulls rather than these black demons." Lam endured, gritted his teeth, and immersed himself in the study of the masters—Goya, Bosch, El Greco. Yet it was an encounter that would change everything: in 1929, he crossed paths with Pablo Picasso in a Montparnasse café.
The master, fascinated by the African masks he had discovered at the Musée de l’Homme, saw in Lam a "brother in race." He invited him to his studio, showed him his own canvases inspired by "Negro art," and one day declared: "You are a real African. I am only a thief." Lam smiled, but the phrase haunted him. What did it mean to be "a real African" when you had grown up in a Cuba that erased its roots? When you carried the blood of three continents? When you had learned to pray to both the Virgin of Caridad del Cobre and Changó, the Yoruba god of thunder?
The answer would come years later, in the Vedado studio, between walls covered in veves—those sacred chalk drawings traced by Santería priests to invoke the spirits.
02Gouache and blood: when painting becomes ritual
If The Jungle still fascinates today, it is because it does not merely represent a landscape. It is a ceremony. A trance frozen on paper.
Lam chose gouache, that opaque, matte paint resembling chalk or dried earth. Not oil, too slow, too sensual. Not watercolor, too light. Gouache is the material of spells, talismans, ephemeral drawings traced on the floors of huts before being washed away by rain. To stretch the canvas, he used newspaper—pages torn from Diario de la Marina, the daily of white planters, where they spoke of sugar harvests and "the problems of Negro labor." A jab. A revenge.
When you look closely at The Jungle, you discover details that send a chill down your spine. These figures with elongated limbs, faces that seem to melt like wax, eyes that follow you across the room… They were not born of Lam’s imagination. They came to him. "I do not paint monsters," he once explained to André Breton. "I paint what I see when I close my eyes and the gods speak to me."
For unlike Picasso, Lam did not merely borrow forms. He lived them. In his studio, one found altars dedicated to Eleguá, the god of crossroads, represented by a horse’s head with white eyes. Cowrie shells, used for divination. Bottles of rum and cigars, offerings to Changó. Before starting a canvas, he consulted a babalawo, a Santería priest, who told him which colors to use—red for Changó, blue for Yemayá, green for Oshún. Sometimes, the babalawo forbade him to paint for several days, because "the spirits are not pleased."
One evening in 1943, as he worked on The Jungle, Lam felt a presence behind him. He turned around: no one. Yet the drums grew louder, and a scent of ash and honey filled the air. He understood then that the orishas had entered the canvas. The next day, he signed the work with a simple "Lam" in the bottom right corner, as if sealing a pact.
03Sugar and the knife: what the jungle hides
At first glance, The Jungle resembles a tropical forest teeming with hybrid creatures. But those who know Cuba understand that this jungle is anything but natural. It is made of sugarcane.
The stalks rising toward the sky, the leaves transforming into arms, legs, erect phalluses… Everything here speaks of the economy that shaped the island. Sugar, that "white diamond" that made Cuba rich and its slaves wretched. Lam, whose family owned land, knew the price of blood shed for every grain. In the plantations of Sagua La Grande, cane cutters labored under a scorching sun, their hands bleeding on machete blades, and at night, they danced the rumba to forget.
Look closely: at the center of the canvas, a female figure with heavy breasts and powerful thighs seems to emerge from a cluster of cane. Her eyes are two black slits, her smile a crescent moon. She is Oshún, the Yoruba goddess of love and rivers, but also the protector of enslaved women who threw themselves into wells rather than endure their masters’ rape. At her feet, a small figure with white eyes—Eleguá, the trickster, the one who opens paths and plays tricks on the powerful.
And then there is the detail most visitors to the MoMA miss: in the left leg of the central figure, the shape of a machete is visible. A weapon. A symbol. In 1843, Cuba’s slaves had revolted in the La Escalera conspiracy, brandishing their machetes against Spanish soldiers. Lam had not forgotten. In his jungle, nature is not innocent. It is political.
04Picasso, Breton, and the jealousy of the white gods
When The Jungle arrived in New York in 1944, it caused a sensation. American critics, accustomed to the serene landscapes of the School of Paris, were disconcerted. "A nightmarish vision of Africa," wrote a New York Times journalist. "Cubism on acid," added another. Yet behind the scenes, two men observed the canvas with a mix of admiration and rage.
The first was Pablo Picasso. He had seen the work in Lam’s Paris studio and said nothing. But a few weeks later, he told a friend: "Lam did what I never dared. He made Africa real." The words sounded like a confession. For Picasso had stolen the masks. Lam had made them speak.
The second was André Breton. The pope of Surrealism, who had welcomed Lam into his circle in 1940, was both fascinated and unsettled. In Surrealism and Painting, he wrote that The Jungle was "the most important painting of the 20th century." Yet in a private letter, he admitted: "Lam surpasses us. His art is not Surrealist. It is sacred." Breton, who dreamed of a purely aesthetic revolution, discovered with astonishment that true subversion came from the margins—from those Caribbean islands where the African gods had never stopped dancing.
Despite the praise, Lam remained an outsider. When the MoMA bought The Jungle for $1,000 (a modest sum even then), the exhibition label barely mentioned his Afro-Cuban roots. They spoke of "Cubism," of "Surrealism," but never of Santería. As if form could be separated from content. As if Lam’s gods were mere decoration.
05The studio of spirits: when painting becomes possession
Wifredo Lam’s studio in Vedado resembled a temple. The walls were covered in drawings of veves—those sacred symbols Santería priests trace in chalk to invoke the orishas. On a shelf, wooden statuettes represented Changó, the god of thunder, and Yemayá, the mother of waters. On the floor, cowrie shells, rooster feathers, half-empty bottles of rum. "Here, we do not paint," Lam explained to a journalist in 1946. "We listen."
For him, creation was a spiritual act. Before starting a canvas, he fasted for three days, drinking only water and black coffee. Then he lit white and red candles and consulted a babalawo, who told him which orisha was "mounting" that day. If it was Oggún, the god of iron, he used dark colors and angular forms. If it was Oshún, he favored yellows and greens, his strokes more fluid, more sensual.
One evening in 1947, as he worked on The Eternal Presence, a canvas dedicated to the composer Alejandro García Caturla, Lam felt a presence behind him. He turned around: no one. Yet the drums echoed in the courtyard, and the scent of tobacco and honey filled the room. Suddenly, his brush began to move on its own. "It is not I who paints," he murmured to his assistant. "It is Changó."
When the canvas was finished, Lam was exhausted, as if after a night of ritual dance. He signed the work with a simple "Lam," but he knew it was not his name that mattered. What mattered was that the gods had spoken.
06The legacy of a sorcerer: when art becomes legend
Wifredo Lam died in Paris in 1982, far from Cuba, in a small apartment in Montparnasse. He lived long enough to see his work enter museums, but not long enough to witness its true consecration: that of an art that, today, inspires visual artists, designers, musicians, and writers alike.
In 1991, filmmaker Julie Dash drew from The Jungle for the sets of Daughters of the Dust, a film about the Gullah, descendants of slaves from the Sea Islands who preserved their African traditions. In 2016, Beyoncé incorporated Lam’s visual codes into Lemonade, transforming her dancers into Yoruba goddesses. And in 2023, designer Grace Wales Bonner created a collection inspired by the colors of Santería, where Changó’s red met Yemayá’s blue.
Yet the most beautiful tribute may come from the streets of Havana. In the Regla neighborhood, where batá drums still resound at night, people say that Lam’s canvases continue to live. That the figures from The Jungle sometimes step out of the MoMA’s frame to dance in secret ceremonies. That the eyes of the orishas follow those who dare to look at them too long.
For Wifredo Lam was never just a painter. He was a mediator, a sorcerer, a man who achieved the impossible: bringing Africa into modern art without ever betraying it. And even today, when you stand before The Jungle, you can still hear a distant echo—the rustling of banana leaves, the rhythm of the drums, and the laughter of Eleguá, the trickster god, reminding us that art, sometimes, is a matter of magic.