Personnage aux tiroirs (Figure with Drawers), circa 1934–38

Executed circa 1934–38.

Dalí’s expert draftsmanship is on display within the elegant and elongated lines that comprise a solitary female figure replete with an arched head in profil perdu. This large-scale work from circa 1934–38 was made during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), a period when Dalí’s mannequin-like figures adopted an exaggerated height and angular boniness. Their emaciated appearance, perhaps alluding to the suffering felt by his fellow Catalans during wartime. In the present work, the figure is incorporated with vertical succession of dresser drawers and harkens back to his celebrated painted plaster object Venus de Milo with Drawers (1934). The compartmentalized drawers of Freud’s theory now opened to reveal the trauma of a country tearing itself apart.