Femme à l'Escargot [Woman with Snail] from Poémes secrets d'Apollinaire

Salvador Dalí remains one of the best-known Surrealist artists despite the brevity of his formal affiliation with the movement. Embraced by the Paris Surrealists in 1929, Dalí developed his signature style using what he called a “paranoiac-critical” method, which productively simulated paranoia by extracting double images and hidden associations from deceptively realistic scenes. He created a language of motifs that heighten this sense of disquiet: barren landscapes; distorted, melting clocks; and suggestions of decay, such as ants. Dalí’s sympathy for totalitarian dictators, including Francisco Franco, led in 1937 to his expulsion from the Surrealist group.

This print relates to a posthumously published set of erotic poems by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), who coined the word “surréaliste” (super realist) in 1917 and was a touchstone for the movement. Apollinaire had written the “secret” poems to his fiancée from the front during World War I. Dalí’s print thus mixes imagery of war and eroticism with favorite elements of his own iconography.