Woman Aflame

Material: bronze

Technique: lost wax process

Edition size : 350 + 35 EA

Height: 84 cm / 33.07 in

Edition: patina green

Maquette: original wax, Woman Aflame, 1980 

This sculpture recalls Dalí’s 1937 oil painting Burning Giraffe, and unites two of his
favorite motifs: female figure with drawers and fire.
 
The female figure here is composed largely of flames. These inextinguishable flames
represent burning passion spreading from the feet upwards. Rising flames modeled in bronze give the impression that the whole figure is consumed by fire and seems to
have a life of its own.
 
The woman’s physical appearance acquires a new perspective: crutches support her
arched body and she is compartmentalized by drawers. Influenced by Freud’s theories, drawers were used by Dalí to symbolize the unconscious. As Dalí once said, “The human body is full of secret drawers that can only be opened by psychoanalysis”.
Aligning the figure’s torso and front leg, these partly opened drawers represent
concealed sexuality of women. They act as an “entrance” into a woman’s interior
world and represent our deepest desires and the mystery of hidden secrets.
The faceless figure represents all women, her beauty arising not merely from her
sensuous form, but from a sense of inner mystery that seems to derive as much from
what she chooses to withhold as to reveal.
 
Originally, the figure was completely curved backwards. Mr Levi recounts Dalí
throwing the wax model to the floor in a moment of rage when he suggested
straightening the bust slightly. Without Gala’s help in reasoning with Dalí, the
sculpture would not exist as it does today in this expressive, intimate form.
Date: conceived and first cast in 1980