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The Anthropomorphic Tower

In the upper left stands a tan phallic tower with a flag on top and two tan balls in front, a brown grouping of curly trees behind the tower. From the lower right, a slightly abstracted head and shoulders of a female with the legs and torso of a second female figure rises along the side.
© Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2018

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  • In the upper left stands a tan phallic tower with a flag on top and two tan balls in front, a brown grouping of curly trees behind the tower. From the lower right, a slightly abstracted head and shoulders of a female with the legs and torso of a second female figure rises along the side.

Date:

1930

Artist:

Salvador Dalí
Spanish, 1904-1989

About this artwork

Salvador Dalí created Anthropomorphic Tower at a time in his career when he aligned himself with the Surrealists and began to produce dreamlike images charged with sexual desires and anxieties. This pastel relates to a painting of the same year called The Great Masturbator (now in the Museo nacional centro de arte Reina Sofia, Madrid). While in the painting the torso is clearly male and the head female, the pastel obfuscates each form’s sexual identity. Here the palette on the right is more subdued, in contrast with the color of the tower-penis in the upper left, which is so bright as to appear almost spot lit. Dalí used the motif several times during this period. Could the figure with closed eyes on the right be dreaming or hallucinating the image of the Anthropomorphic Tower<.em>? Dalí’s image is open to interpretation, which is at the heart of Surrealist art.

Status

On View, Gallery 397

Department

Prints and Drawings

Artist

Salvador Dalí

Title

The Anthropomorphic Tower

Place

Spain (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1930

Medium

Pastel and stumping on tan wove paper

Inscriptions

Signed and dated, lower right: "S.-Dali-30-"

Dimensions

65 × 50 cm (25 5/8 × 19 11/16 in.)

Credit Line

Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection

Reference Number

2018.308

Copyright

© Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2018

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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