OIL PAINTING: Sphere Galatea, 1952
With this work Dali entered a new period of creative activity, which he called "nuclear painting". In this he explored the discoveries of atomic physics concerning the structure of matter and, above all, the release of energy involved in the breaking of atomic particles. A sense of the divisibility of matter reappears constantly in Dali's paintings of the later
1940s and 1950s. In "Sphere Galatea"
he incorporated the classical tradition by linking a Raphael head of the Virgin with the face of Gala and then shattered them into multiple parts over the sea horizon.