The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory

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The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory

Salvador Dalí, 1952–1954

Oil on canvas

25.4 × 33 cm

Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg

La desintegración de la persistencia de la memoria or The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (oil on canvas, c. 1952 to 1954), is a painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. It is an oil on canvas re-creation of the artist's famous 1931 work The Persistence of Memory, and measures a diminutive 25.4 x 33 cm.

[edit] Subject

In this version, the landscape from the original work has been flooded with water. Disintegration depicts what is occurring both above and below the water's surface. The landscape of Cadaqués is now hovering above the water. The plane and block from the original is now divided into brick-like shapes that float in relation to each other, with nothing binding them, the tree from which the soft watch hangs being similarly segmented. The hands of the soft watches float above their dials, with several pointed objects resembling rhinoceros horns floating in parallel formations encircling the watches. The distorted human visage from the original painting is beginning to morph into another of the strange fish floating above it. However, to Dali, the fish was a symbol of life.^{[citation needed]}

To Dalí, this image was symbolic of the psychological effect that the advent of the atomic bomb had on humanity.^{[citation needed]}

This painting is currently owned by the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.