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Inventions of the Monsters

A painting of strange and surreal scene in a desert landscape with mountains in the background. The scene features a giraffe that is on fire, disembodied forms and faces, and skeletal figures.
© Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2018

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  • A painting of strange and surreal scene in a desert landscape with mountains in the background. The scene features a giraffe that is on fire, disembodied forms and faces, and skeletal figures.

Date:

1937

Artist:

Salvador Dalí
Spanish, 1904–1989

About this artwork

Salvador Dalí, Surrealism’s most publicized practitioner, created monstrous visions of a world turned inside out, which he made even more compelling through his extraordinary technical skills. When the Art Institute acquired Inventions of the Monsters in 1943, the artist wrote his congratulations and explained:

“According to Nostradamus the apparition of monsters presages the outbreak of war. The canvas was painted in the Semmering mountains near Vienna a few months before the Anschluss [the 1938 political union of Austria and Germany] and has a prophetic character. Horse women equal maternal river monsters. Flaming giraffe equals masculine apocalyptic monster. Cat angel equals divine heterosexual monster. Hourglass equals metaphysical monster. Gala and Dalí equal sentimental monster. The little blue dog is not a true monster.”

Inventions of the Monsters has an ominous mood. It is rife with threats of danger, from the menacing fire in the distance to the sibylline figure in the foreground with an hourglass and a butterfly, both symbols of the inevitability of death. Next to this figure sit Dalí and his wife and muse, Gala. With his native Catalonia embroiled in the Spanish Civil War, the artist surely felt great anxiety over a world without a safe haven, a world that indeed had allowed for the invention of monsters.

Status

On View, Gallery 395

Department

Modern Art

Artist

Salvador Dalí

Title

Inventions of the Monsters

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.

1937

Medium

Oil on canvas

Inscriptions

none

Dimensions

51.4 × 78.4 cm (20 1/4 × 30 7/8 in.)

Credit Line

Joseph Winterbotham Collection

Reference Number

1943.798

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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