Salvador Dali

Surrealism, Cubizm and other styles

Dali Paintings 1904 - 1989 Spanish Surrealist Painter

Premonition of Civil War, 1936

Oil on canvas, 100 cm x 99 cm (39 1/3 in x 39 3/8 in)

Walter Arensberg Collection

City Landscapes

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OIL PAINTING: Premonition of Civil War, 1936
In Premonition of Civil War depicted is a grimacing dismembered figure symbolic of the Spanish state in civil war, alternately grasping upward at itself and holding itself down underfoot, a relationship morbidly prescient of Escher's later Drawing Hands (1948). The painting resides at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Premonition of Civil War, which was painted in 1936, is used to show the struggle of war that can sometimes be both self-fulfilling and self-mutilating at the same time. Dali was openly against war, and used this painting to show it.