35 cm × 27 cm (14 in × 11 in)
Wikimedia Commons
The Burning Giraffe, original title Jirafa en llamas, is an oil painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. It was created in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, and reflects his internal struggle with the events then taking place in his country.[1]
The painting depicts two female figures with vaguely phallic shapes emerging from their backs. The open drawers protruding from the left leg and chest of the blue figure in the foreground is a reference to the Freudian idea of an “inner, subconscious within man”. Dalí was a great admirer of the psychoanalytic method developed by Sigmund Freud:[1]
In the distance is a giraffe with its mane on fire. Dalí first used the burning giraffe image in his 1930 film L’Âge d’Or (The Golden Age), but it did not appear in his paintings until 1937. He believed that the 16th-century French astrologer and physician Nostradamus had predicted that the appearance of monsters pressaged the outbreak of war, and that “the flaming giraffe equals masculine cosmic apocalyptic monster”.[3]