A Body at War: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)

Salvador Dalí's Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is the centerpiece of A Body at War, a focused installation in the museum's James Family Wing. Dalí painted it in Paris in 1936, months before the Spanish Civil War began. It shows a contorted body tearing at its own limbs, an image of a country turning against itself. The museum shows it alongside its own collection, with black-and-white historical images and commentary on the divisions that led to the war, and connects it to Goya and Picasso. It is still unclear whether Dalí added the prophetic subtitle before or after the war.