NAVIGATION
ALL ARTISTS
Face
of War (Visage de la Guerre) 1940, by Salvador
Dali Oil on canvas 64 x 79cm Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen,
Rotterdam. The Face of War (La Cara De La Guerra) was painted during the
brief period that the artist lived in the state of California in the United
States. The period in which the painting was made was tumultuous for most
of the world - for Spaniards such as Salvador Dali especially so. The
3 year long Second Spanish Civil War ended in 1939 dashing the hopes of
the fledgling republic which became a repressive fascist dictatorship.
World War Two commenced simultaneously giving the entire globe the appearance
of war. Dali's painting the Face of War represents his feelings of war
- endlessly repeating death and decay. The miserable face of the corpse
- the visage of war - sees only death, speaks only death, and reflected
in his eyes are the corpses whose eyes and mouths are also filled with
death. Dali claimed that the handprint depicted in the lower right corner
to be his own. War was a special topic for Dali who claimed he could have
premonitions of war and in fact feel the pain and destructions of bombings
which have not yet occurred. On war he spoke often, "I was
entering a period of rigor and asceticism which was going to dominate
my style, my thoughts, and my tormented life. Spain on fire would light
up this drama of the renaissance of aesthetics. Spain would serve as a
holocaust to that post-war Europe tortured by ideological dramas, by moral
and artistic anxieties - at one fell swoop, from the middle of the Spanish
cadaver springs up. Half devoured by vermin and ideological worms, the
Iberian penis in erection, huge like a cathedral filled with the white
dynamite of hatred. Bury and unbury! Disinter and inter in order to unbury
again! Such was the charnel desire of the Civil War in that impatient
Spain. One would see how she was capable of suffering, of making others
suffer, of burying and unburying, of killing and resurrecting. It was
necessary to scratch the earth to exhume tradition and to profane everything
in order to be dazzled anew by all the treasures that the land was hiding
in its entrails." While his compatriots were mostly socialists
and communists Dali proclaimed his support for the fascist government
of Francisco Franco though it is doubtful Dali had any political convictions
beyond those that would promote Salvador Dali (in fact the Francoists
wrecked a cinema in protest of the Dali/Bunuel film L'age d'or). To find
out more about Dali visit Fundacio
Gala-Salvador Dali a wonderful website run by the estate of Salvador
Dali about the museum and the artists final home in Dali's hometown of
Figueras in Spain. Below you will find a selection of Dali's works simply
click on the thumbnail to be routed to that page with a larger image as
well as information about that work.