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Wifredo Lam charted a pathbreaking trajectory in modern art and served as a reference for subsequent generations of artists working across the Caribbean, Africa, and the West. The early decades of his career were defined by movement and exile: from Cuba to Spain, where he trained as an academic painter, and later to Paris, to escape the Spanish Civil War, in which he had fought alongside the Republicans against the Nationalist military dictatorship. Lam was forced to flee again in the summer of 1940, after the Nazi invasion of Paris. His exile in Marseille, where he awaited safe passage back to the Americas, laid the foundation for his later work. Lam would continue to elaborate on this new world when he returned to Cuba, where he completed the monumental oil painting on kraft paper La Jungla (The Jungle) (1942–43), whose all-over composition features life-size plant-animal-human figures emerging from a dense field of sugarcane, a location that evokes Cuba’s history of slavery and indentured servitude.

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Wifredo Lam with La Jungla (The Jungle, 1942–43), Le matin vert(The Green Morning, 1943), and on the floor, La Silla (The Chair, 1943), in his Havana studio, 1943. Archives SDO Wifredo Lam, Paris.

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Leadership support for the exhibition is provided by the Sandra and Tony Tamer Exhibition Fund, the Eyal and Marilyn Ofer Family Foundation, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, and the Dian Woodner Exhibition Endowment Fund.

Generous funding is provided by The Black Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art.

Additional support is provided by Roberto S. and Elizabeth T. Goizueta.

The Bloomberg Connects digital experience is made possible through the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Major support for the publication is provided by The Museum of Modern Art’s Research and Scholarly Publications endowment established through the generosity of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Edward John Noble Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Perry R. Bass, and the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Challenge Grant Program. Generous funding is provided by the Jo Carole Lauder Publications Endowment Fund of The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art.