Introduction I have chosen to critically analyse a piece of visual art by the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí. The painting is called Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Figure 1.1), oil on canvas, painted in 1936. It is a key piece of Dalí’s work as it represents the gore and horror of the Spanish Civil War as portrayed by Salvador Dalí himself.
This piece of art was inspired by Dalí’s visit to Barcelona in 1934, while at that time the Catalan Republicans and Anarcho-Syndicalists merged their forces together to ultimately gain independence for the region, yet the Government army have regained control, resulting in scenes of violence, gunfire’s, and death in Catalunya.
Dalí’s badly timed visit to Spain was sparked by an invitation to a lecture from Dalmau, an art dealer, but he decided to abruptly cancel the meeting due to the dangerous circumstances of the Catalonian uprising, leaving Dalí and his wife Gala to flee Spain.
Description
The painting itself, preceded the start of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, yet Dalí was able to capture the vast devastation of this war. Dalí describes this painting as a ‘Vast
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The beans could also reflect upon the melancholic nature of killing, ‘Swallowing all that unconscious meat’, and the outcome which is a mass of biodegradable waste in the form of excrement which lays on the right lower limb, which will be avoided and forgotten about. This echoes the murder of Lorca, an innocent person who was killed for personal reasons and then ultimately left to decay. All of this is contrasted by the beauty of the Catalan sky, that was once less bloody, and