This work represents one of the models from Dali's cubist period in which he follows the clownism line of Rafael Barradas. This Uruguayan artist introduced the futurism and the cubism that he had seen in situ on Italian and French soils. Rafael Barradas had created the so-called vibrationism which was based on a synthesis of the cubist planes and the futurist dynamism, and this influence can be perceived in Dali's work, Cubist Self-Portrait, painted in 1923.

A surrealist work painted by Dalí in 1932 in which he shows his desire to experiment with different stages of picture completion.

This work is known by the name of The Spectre of the Libido. It presents some of the verses from the poem "L' amour et la mémoire", wherein love would be represented by a putrefact body and memory by the presence of a small child. This child is a depiction of Dali himself situated at bottom right dressed in a sailor suit in remembrance of his childhood, holding a hoop and a femur that serves as a stick.

The medieval story of Tristan and Isolde was one of the legends that most powerfully captured Dali's imagination. It tells the story of two lovers and ends by revealing the myth of impossible love, to which are added forceful tragic elements. Salvador Dalí was able to engage in such an appealing subject on several occasions during the decade of the 40's. Specifically, when he was commissioned to paint the scenery for the 1941 ballet "Tristan and Isolde" and again for a new adaptation of it in 1944.

Before becoming a painter in the pure "classical style" Dalí painted this magnificent portrait of his muse, Gala. He worked on its completion for over six months. Dali gave it the name Galarina to draw a comparison or simile with Raphael's La Fornarina.

The painting shows Saint Anthony the Abbot kneeling in a desert and holding, in the traditional exorcism gesture, a cross made from two sticks in order to ward off the temptations that are assailing him. The canvas literally describes the temptations: Triumph, Sex, Gold and Riches, that man usually falls prey to.

Picasso always maintained very good relations with Catalonia and from the early days of Dali's career showed interest in his work. So it is not to be surprised that on Dali's first trip to Paris the young artist was quick to visit Picasso. The latter received him in his studio and showed him how his work was developing at that time, an evolution that made a deep impression on Dali. Picasso's new style, fairly similar in those days to that of Breton, must have inclined Dali's way of painting towards surrealism for the first time.

A surrealist bust that Dalí painted in 1930 and put the final touches to in 1970.