The Anthropomorphic Tower

1930

Salvador Dalí
Spanish, 1904-1989

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

Robert Descharnes and Gilles Néret, Salvador Dali, 1904-1989, translated by Michael Hulse (Cologne, 1994), 1: pl. 316, 2: p. 748, no. 316, as “The Red Tower (Anthropomorphic Tower).”
Dawn Ades, with Margherita Andreotti and Adam Jolles, Surrealist Art: The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1997), pp. 100–01, cat. 51 (color ill.).

Chicago, Rosenstone Art Gallery, Bernard Horwich Center, “Surrealism,” 1966, cat. 1, as “Red Tower.”
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, “Fantastic Drawings,” 1967–1968, no cat.
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, “Twentieth-Century Drawings from Chicago Collections,” 1973, n.p., as “The Red Tower.”
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, “Dada and Surrealism in Chicago Collections,” 1984–1985, pp. 23, and 132, as “The Red Tower.”
Art Institute of Chicago, “A Tribute to Edwin A. Bergman (1917–1986): Selections from the Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection,” 1986, pamphlet no. 5, as “The Red Tower (Anthropomorphic Tower).”
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, “Salvador Dali, 1904-1989,” cat. 69 (ill.), as “La Tour Rouge or La Tour Anthorpomorphique.”
Humlebaek, Denmark, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, “Salvador Dali,” 1989-1990, cat. 94 (ill.), as “La Tour Rouge or La Tour Anthorpomorphique.”
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, “Salvador Dali,” 1990, cat. 13 (ill.), as “The Red Tower or Anthropomorphic Tower.”
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Salvador Dali: The Image Disappears”, February 18 - June 12, 2023.

Sold by Carstairs Gallery, New York, to Lindy and Edwin Bergman, Chicago, 1961; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2018.

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