The Anthropomorphic Tower

The Anthropomorphic Tower — Salvador Dalí. 1930.

Medium: Pastel and stumping on tan wove paper. Dimensions: 65 × 50 cm (25 5/8 × 19 11/16 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

Salvador Dalí created Anthropomorphic Tower at a time in his career when he aligned himself with the Surrealists and began to produce dreamlike images charged with sexual desires and anxieties. This pastel relates to a painting of the same year called The Great Masturbator (now in the Museo nacional centro de arte Reina Sofia, Madrid). While in the painting the torso is clearly male and the head female, the pastel obfuscates each form’s sexual identity. Here the palette on the right is more subdued, in contrast with the color of the tower-penis in the upper left, which is so bright as to appear almost spot lit. Dalí used the motif several times during this period. Could the figure with closed eyes on the right be dreaming or hallucinating the image of the Anthropomorphic Tower<.em>? Dalí’s image is open to interpretation, which is at the heart of Surrealist art.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.