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Who Is Salvador Dali's Soft Construction With Boiled Beans?

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Salvador Dali’s gruesome portrayal of the human form through the separation and reassembly of the human figure in the oil painting ‘Soft Construction with Boiled Beans’ (1936) represents the destruction found in war and the battles within one’s self. Spanish born, Salvador Dali has been hailed the ‘most eccentric and imaginative figure in Spanish painting’. (Encyclopedia of Visual Artists, n.d.) Dali worked in several art movement such as Futurism and Metaphysical Painting, before finally turning to Surrealism where his fame began. His incredible imagination for the impossible and meticulous style of painting combines to create incredible landscapes and objects. Developed from from the Dada art movement, Surrealism aimed to “channel the unconscious …show more content…

Though the original drafting of this painting began before the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1934, Dali always claimed that this painting was a ‘prophecy’ of the war occurring from 1936. (Dali Paintings, 2011) Pictured above are two creatures that appear to be two parts of the same creature so that it appears to be wrestling itself. The monstrosities of bones and body parts seem to be tearing at itself. “The figure’s ecstatic grimace, taut neck muscles, and petrifying fingers and toes create a vision of disgusting fascination”. (Dali Paintings, 2011) The monster rests on a box and dead tree in a completely barren landscape. Dali’s use of dramatic lighting on the human form creates the allusion of height, grandeur and …show more content…

After to moving to Paris from Spain, Picasso, along with Georges Braque, created the art movement Cubism lasting from 1908 into the 1920’s. This movement completely reimagined the human form and draws the viewer in. In cubism, the subject is analysed, broken up and reassembled into an abstracted form and the different angles are combined (multiple views) to represent the subject in more context or depth. (Gloscal Photography, n.d.) ‘Guernica’ contains several human figures that are disproportioned and fragmented. The mural sized painting depicts the scenes of violence from the Spanish Civil War, particularly the conflict in the town of Guernica. Picasso painted this as an immediate reaction to the Nazi's casual bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during Spanish Civil War. This painting helped bring the Spanish Civil War to the world's attention. There are many different interpretations of Guernica through the two dominant elements of the bull and the horse, and some critics warn against trusting any political messages in

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