Wifredo Lam
The modern Cuban painter, Wifredo Lam, is recognized as the most important Caribbean artist who integrated his national Afro-Cuban identity with his European experience. Lam ushered in a new perspective of the Afro-Caribbean presence in modern Western art. His idiosyncratic imagery evokes metaphorical environments and tropical landscapes filled with figures, animals and elements of Santería orishas, or deities of the spirit world, worshiped in the Afro-Cuban syncretic religion of Santería. Depictions of hybrid, half animal-half human figures, shown in these works on paper, are symbolic representations of a shamanistic transformation in the midst of a ritual ceremony.
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