Wilfredo Lam

This tempera and pastel painting (property of the Art Institute of Chicago) by the Surrealist artist Wilfredo Lam, is a study for his major work, "The Jungle": 

Lam was born in Cuba in 1902, and as a young man traveled to Spain, where he developed his artistic skills, and began to readily absorb the European culture.  He then fled to France, after being injured while fighting in the Spanish Civil War in 1938.  In Paris, his art became strongly inspired by his meeting and friendship with Pablo Picasso, and he readily fell in with the Surrealist group under André Breton.  As with many other abstract and Surrealist artists, the German occupation of Paris sent him scrambling abroad in 1941.  Lam returned home to Cuba, where he was ready to bask and mature as an artist in the tropical Afro-Cuban culture. Lam eventually returned to live in Paris, in 1952. 


Lam was determined to portray the Negro traditions in a way that was raw and honest, not as something beautified or romanticized for Western consumption.  His sharp, angular forms, depicting people in close contact (and morphing) with plants and animals, have a jarring impact to them. Lam was known for his skillful compositional skills, with "The Jungle" in particular being a tightly concocted masterpiece (the finished work which can be viewed here on Wikipedia).