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THE GREAT MASTURBATOR (1929)
(El Gran Masturbador)
Oil on canvas (110 x 150 cm.)
Reina Sof�a National Museum

This picture formally contains characteristics of all his surrealistic painting: the whole balanced unity despite the large number of elements and the huge space that joins sky and ground in the distance .
Dal� was already surrealist, which enabled him to portray his own life and all his obsessions in his works.
One of them was sex. A deep and good judge of Freud's theories, Dal� didn�t hide his personality nor his problems, which he showed both in his paintings and his interviews. This open personality made the difference between him and other surreal artists.
In this picture everything, more or less, has its own ambiguous meaning.
The central subject is his self portrait - which he would repeat in many other pictures, very stylized but recognizable: the big nose, the yellowish color and the large face. It seems clear that the alegory�s main character is he himself, and his figure appears surrounded by several objects with mixed meanings. The grasshopper, an animal that caused him terror, filled with ants that signify death. A fish hook as family ties, the lion as sexual desire, stones as his past, a lonely figure as solitude...
Masturbation appears in modernist style with the woman who emerges from his portrait, her face close to the male genitals hidden in close-fitting underpants. Near the woman is an iris which simbolizes purity - a complicated way of defining masturbation as the purest sexual relationship.
Gala appears here again, as frequently occurred, in this case in the embraced couple under the main figure.
In this style of self-portrait, Dal� used large eyelashes to depict his hope of making his dreams come true.

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