Figure on the Rocks, 1926 by Salvador Dali

Following his visit to Paris in 1926, when he met Picasso for the first time, Dali returned home and produced this somewhat disturbing painting, which was exhibited in Barcelona in the autumn of that year. The rocks in question are those of his beloved Costa Brava, which he also represented elsewhere in less threatening guise in Cliffs (Woman on the Rocks), also of 1926, (Private collection).

The woman stretched out on the rocks is again Ana Maria, whose features can be identified in the shadow of the profile cast onto her arm. However, Dali has metamorphosized his sister into a monumental female figure in the style of Picasso. The power of this image is greatly enhanced by its violent foreshortening, which anticipates the spectacular effects that Dali was to achieve much later in such paintings as Christ of St John of the Cross.