Elephants, 1948 by Salvador Dali

Elephant is also a recurring image in Dali's works. It first appeared in his 1944 work Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. The elephants, inspired by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture base in Rome of an elephant carrying an ancient obelisk, are portrayed 'with long, multi-jointed, almost invisible legs of desire' along with obelisks on their backs. Coupled with the image of their brittle legs, these encumbrances, noted for their phallic overtones, create a sense of phantom reality. 'The elephant is a distortion in space,' one analysis explains, 'its spindly legs contrasting the idea of weightlessness with structure.'

As Salvador Dali said:

I am painting pictures which make me die for joy, I am creating with an absolute naturalness, without the slightest aesthetic concern, I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly."