Work of art by Wilfredo Lam

Sagua la Grande, Cuba, December 8, 1902 – Paris, September 11, 1982

Aquatint etching – sheet 38 x 54 cm (etching 24.5 x 36.5 cm) 
Copy XV/XX – Year: 1980

Engraved stamp on front. 

A great early 20th century painter, Wifredo Lam blended elements of Cubism and Surrealism with African culture in paintings on display alongside those of Pablo Picasso and other Cubists and Fauves.

Lam studied in Spain under the same teacher as Salvador Dalí and became friends with Picasso soon after his arrival in Paris in 1938. After returning to Havana in 1941, Lam began to produce paintings dominated by hybrid human-animal-plant figures. It was there in Cuba that he created his most famous work, The Jungle (1943). With four grotesque figures with mask-like faces just barely discernable in the dense vegetation, his work has been compared to Picasso's masterpiece, Guernica (1937).