Swans Reflecting Elephants, c.1937

Salvador Dali (1904 – 1989) merges hallucination with reality in his iconic Critical-Paranoiac style in “Swans Reflecting Elephants,” a quintessential Surrealist painting in which mirror images of swans and elephants transform into one another. Dali, who redefined Surrealism, expressed the unconscious process of thought, dreams and perception of reality through idiosyncratic paintings as well as numerous other art forms. Creating a spectrum of imagery from fanciful to nightmarish, he scrutinized the writings of Freud and art magazines devoted to Cubism, Futurism, and metaphysical works.