The Face of War
Encyclopedia
The Face of War (1940) is a painting by the Spanish surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

. It was painted during a brief period when the artist lived in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

.

The trauma and the view of war had often served as inspiration for Dalí’s work. He sometimes believed his artistic vision to be premonitions of war. This work was painted between the end of the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

 and beginning of the Second World War.

The painting depicts a disembodied face hovering against a barren desert landscape. The face is withered like that of a corpse and wears an expression of misery. In its mouth and eye sockets are identical faces. In their mouths and eyes are more identical faces in a process implied to be infinite
Recursion
Recursion is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are exactly parallel with each other the nested images that occur are a form of infinite recursion. The term has a variety of meanings specific to a variety of disciplines ranging from...

. Swarming around the large face are biting serpents. In the lower right corner is a hand print that Dalí insisted was left by his own hand.

Source

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