Cuban art his homeland. He rapidly developed his mature style, which incorporated elements of Cubism, Surrealism, and African art, along with imagery of the Santeria rituals he'd grown up around. In 1943 he painted "The Jungle", which is considered to be among the masterpieces of Cuban art. Amelia Peláez (1896 - 1968) was the sole major female artist of the vanguardia. A San Alejandro graduate, she studied and worked for several years in Paris, where, prior to her return to Havana in 1934, she absorbed the influence of Henri Matisse and, especially, the Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. During her
20th-century French literature Valéry and Larbaud). In the novel, André Gide's early works, especially "L'Immoraliste" (1902), pursue the problems of freedom and sensuality that symbolism had posed; Alain-Fournier's novel "Le Grand Meaulnes" is a deeply felt portrait of a nostalgic past. But radical experimentation was not appreciated by all literary and artistic circles in the early 20th century. Popular and bourgeois tastes were relatively conservative. The poetic dramas of Edmond Rostand, especially "Cyrano de Bergerac" in 1897, were immensely popular at the start of the 20th century, as too the "well-made" plays and bourgeois farces of Georges Feydeau. Anatole France, Maurice Barrès, Paul