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
Western use of the swastika in the early 20th century specifically Indo-European symbol, and associated it with the ancient migrations of Proto-Indo-Europeans. He connected it with similar shapes found on ancient pots in Germany, and theorised that the swastika square was a "significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors", linking Germanic, Greek and Indo-Iranian cultures. Later discoveries of the motif among the remains of the Hittites and of ancient Iran seemed to confirm this theory, but the symbol was also known for its use by indigenous American Indians as well as Eastern cultures. By the early 20th century it was used worldwide and was regarded as a symbol of good