Anatomies, circa 1937

Executed circa 1937.

Anatomies (circa 1937) is a significant example from an intensely creative and psychoanalytically charged period within Dalí’s oeuvre. Against a uniformly black ground, seven spectral female torsos emerge in a palette of white, red, pink and green. The composition exemplifies the tension Dalí cultivated between technical control and contingency: Areas of the work are rendered with deliberate precision, while others are surrendered to the unpredictable.

To generate the figures’ distinctive surfaces, Dalí employed decalcomania, pressing pigment-soaked absorbent material onto the board so that the paint spread and pooled outside his direct control. The result is the characteristic organic texture visible in the flowering heads—a motif with roots in Femme à tête de roses (1935), here developed into a more complex and macabre register.

Central to Dalian iconography is the drawer, seen in the present work embedded in the torso of the dominant central figure. Drawn from Freudian theory—specifically the idea that the body harbors concealed interior compartments accessible only through analysis—the motif first appeared in Dalí's Vénus de Milo aux tiroirs (1936). In Anatomies, it reappears as one element within a broader visual language of hollowed forms and skeletal bodies, through which Dalí gives material shape to the hidden architecture of the unconscious.