In the civil war in Spain, the Republicans were defeated, and General Franco, who came to power, established a fascist dictatorship in the country. Most Surrealists sympathized with the Republicans. Dali, unlike them, remained a supporter of Franco, although he did not particularly advertise it.
In his political predilections, he often was unpredictable. But without regard to all this, he managed to create a powerful and unusual anti-war cloth. “The bad forebodings of the impending civil war tormented me,” Dali recalled, “and six months before the events began I wrote this picture.
Filled with boiled beans, it depicts a huge human body in the form of monstrous growths of hands and feet that break each other in a paroxysm of insanity. “The square figure formed by the limbs resembles the geographical outlines of Spain – here we are dealing with an obvious allusion.