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Gruesome, bizarre, and excruciatingly meticulous in technique, Salvador Dalí’s paintings rank among the most compelling portrayals of the unconscious mind. In this work, the artist turned his attention to the impending Spanish Civil War, which began in July 1936 and would turn his native country into a bloody battleground. Dalí described this convulsively arresting picture as “a vast human body breaking out into monstrous excrescences of arms and legs tearing at one another in a delirium of autostrangulation.” The desecration of the human body was a great preoccupation of the Surrealists in general, and of Dalí in particular. Here, the figure’s ecstatic grimace, taut neck muscles, and petrifying fingers and toes create a vision of disgusting fascination.

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