Elefantia

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhague (Denmark).

Briefly about the painting:

Explaining classic Danish Surrealists W. Freddie and B. Peterson, whose works (including «Elefantia») were at the exhibition “After Surrealism” (2013), an art historian emphasized that the works of 1930–40 contained the idea that reality has inexplicable and wrong sides. The man in a green jacket clings to the trunk of an elephant, whose leg is a prosthesis, a sofa “flies up” in the background. All this happens in a very real landscape, and all the characters are painted with photographic accuracy. Such unrealistic realism is a trace of the influence of Salvador Dali; however, at the same time, the specificity of the painting with the motive of sleep is obvious. In this work, there is a conflict between the strange content and the very pictorial expression of the plot.