Dali

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About the artwork

The Dalí bronze sculpture Woman Aflame, perfectly encapsulates Dalí’s exploration of three-dimensional form and it effectively demonstrates the core characteristics of Surrealism. Woman Aflame (1980) is a significant work, having a prominent place in Dalí’s sculpture repertoire. The inextinguishable flames represent a burning passion, perhaps that of latent female desire. For Dalí, it is well documented that Drawers symbolize memory and the unconsciousness. They express the mystery of hidden secrets, of which according to Dalí , women possessed. Dalí was influenced by the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and in this sculpture the drawers illustrate the hidden sensuality of the female and the mysteries that the female body contains. Dalí’s attitude towards the art form of sculpture was both scientific and metamorphic, which can be seen in a paragraph from his biography “The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí”: He approached form almost scientifically and his sculptures were a result of much hard work and intellectual ponderings. The Woman Aflame sculpture recalls the 1937 painting The Burning Giraffe created before his 8 year exile to the United States during the 1940s. The painting shows his personal struggle with the chaos of World War II; the images therein can be traced back to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical method, much admired by Dalí.

About the artist