Enkidu Meets Salvador Dali - Galatea of the Spheres (1952)
Description
This painting entitled Galatea of the
Spheres created by Salvador Dali in 1952 was a turning point in Dali's
life. By 1952 Dali had turned into a devout Catholic and he was deeply involved
in Catholic mysticism. Dali went from being a leftist revolutionary to a
Catholic esotericist. The advent of nuclear and atomic bombs fascinated Dali,
then Dali began to read a lot about atoms. Even Dali once said that "atoms
are the favorite food of the mind." A born-again Catholic, Dali attempted
a spiritual experiment by marrying Catholicism with modern science. It was from
this that Dali later made atomic and Catholic esotericism the themes of his
paintings, which critics of this era often call "Dali's Period of Atomic
Mysticism." This painting depicts the figure of Galatea, a nymph from
Greek mythology in the form of spheres that are atomic nuclei. From here the
atomic nucleus formed the figure of Galatea.