[1] Inspired by and in contact with some of the most renowned artists of the 20th century, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Lam melded his influences and created a unique style, which was ultimately characterized by the prominence of hybrid figures.

Wifredo Lam was born and raised in Sagua La Grande, a village in the sugar farming province of Villa Clara, Cuba.

Through his godmother, Matonica Wilson, a Santería priestess locally celebrated as a healer and sorceress, he was exposed to rites of the African orishas.

[2] While Lam was never initiated into Santería, Palo Monte, or Abakuá Secret Society, he was familiar with the practices, as cultural participation was widespread in Cuba.

In 1923, Lam began studying in Madrid under Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor y Zaragoza, the curator of the Museo del Prado and teacher of Salvador Dalí.

In the mornings he would attend his conservative teacher's studio, while he spent his evenings working alongside young, nonconformist painters.

[2] Though his dislike for academic conservatism persisted, his time in Spain marked his technical development, in which he began to merge a primitive aesthetic and the traditions of Western composition.

In 1929, he married Eva Piriz, but both she and their young son died in 1931 of tuberculosis; it is likely that this personal tragedy contributed to the dark nature of his work.

[2] Lam had begun to incorporate Surrealist techniques before his time in Europe, learning of artists like Matisse through publications and news from a friend.

He quickly gained the support of Picasso, who introduced him to many of the leading artists of the time, such as Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and Joan Miró.

Much of his work in 1938 possessed emotional intensity; the subject matter ranged from interacting couples to women in despair and showed a considerably stronger African influence, seen in the figures' angular outlines and the synthesis of their bodies.

[7] With the outbreak of World War II and the invasion of Paris by the Germans, Lam left for Marseille, France, in 1940.

In an interview with Max-Pol Fouchet, he said: "I wanted with all my heart to paint the drama of my country, but by thoroughly expressing the negro spirit, the beauty of the plastic art of the blacks.

In this way I could act as a Trojan horse that would spew forth hallucinating figures with the power to surprise, to disturb the dreams of the exploiters.

Upon his return to Cuba, Lam moved away from the cosmopolitan art community and experimented more with Cuban avant-garde styles.

Lam, who continued to sympathize with the common man, exhibited a series of paintings at Havana University in 1955 to demonstrate his support for the students' protests against Batista's dictatorship.

Similarly, in 1965, six years after the revolution, he showed his loyalty to Castro and his goals of social and economic equality by painting El Tercer Mundo (The Third World) for the presidential palace.

In 1960, Lam established a studio in Albissola Marina on Italy's northwest coast and settled there with his wife Lou Laurin, a Swedish painter, and their three sons.

Lam, like many of the most renowned artists of the 20th century, combined radical modern styles with the "primitive" arts of the Americas.

[9] While Diego Rivera and Joaquín Torres García drew inspiration from Pre-Columbian art, Lam was influenced by the Afro-Cubans of that time.

The imagery of the tropics is also suggested with the densely packed cane stalks and palm leaves that merge with the figures, mirroring cosmological concepts from Afro-Cuban religions where deities that inhabit elements in nature.

[10] The somber palette containing a mixture of blue, green, yellow, and white suggests a hidden moonlit scene, perhaps a reference to the secret practice of African religions among enslaved peoples.

Hernández Adrián suggests that The Jungle serves as a critique of the exoticizing lens placed on the Atlantic as a byproduct of the colonial era.

[10] Furthermore, Hernández Adrián claims that the imagery of the artwork reflects the constant struggles black people faced in Cuban society.

[19] On December 6, 2017, Sotheby's sold Lam's A Trois Centimetres de la Terre (1962) for €4.44m ($5.24m), which established a new record price for the painter.