Salvador Dali Exhibit

Today was a fantastically enjoyable trip to the Tate Modern to view the Salvador Dali exhibit and featured films. I thought it was a perfect touch to incorporate the films that Dali had worked on in his life time, which consisted of Un Chien andalou and L’Age d’or. Now I must admit, I’m not a big Dali fan. Surrealist art is so interpretive and I often do not quite understand what the artist’s intentions are. The only art work of Dali I had previously recognized was The Persistence of Memory, which is often described in various art classes.
However, there was one painting in particular that struck my attention. In 1936, Dali painted Autumn Cannibalism. The painting features two warped people feeding each other. Isn’t that sweet ! But the painting is painted with earth toned colors, lots of browns and tans. This couple is seated in what looks like a chest in the middle of a desert of plane. The hands of the couples appear bony and old. Autumn Cannibalism is not a lovely, cheerful picture to look at, but looking at the date it was painted, I could see why. In 1936, the Spanish Civil war began. Dali’s fellow Spaniards were brutally fighting each other and people’s lives were torn apart.
One year later, Pablo Picasso painted Guernica to capture the horrific atrocities by Nazi bombers. I believe Dali wanted to capture the civil war in art, so that people would not forget the violence that took place in Spain. Autumn Cannibalism is by far one of the most heartfelt paintings in the gallery.

Mary Brock