The Enigma of William Tell

Salvador Dalí's 'The Enigma of William Tell' (1933) is a culminating Surrealist provocation in which the artist's charged Oedipal conflict with his father merges with his ambivalence about Lenin, the leader of the Soviet revolution. At the centre a kneeling figure — with the unmistakable features of Lenin as William Tell — has an absurdly elongated buttock supported by a crutch and holds a tiny infant on his extended arm; an apple balances on top of a small child's head. Acquired by the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1949, it is among the largest Dalí paintings in any Nordic collection and a defining Surrealist work.

Exhibition Venue

Moderna Museet

Stockholm, Sweden