What is the title of Dalí's 1937 painting of a giraffe with flaming back?

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What is the title of Dalí's 1937 painting of a giraffe with flaming back? The answer is The Burning Giraffe.

The Burning Giraffe is a 1937 oil painting on panel by Salvador Dalí. Its central animal appears in the distance with flames rising from its back, while the foreground contains a blue female figure supported by elongated, crutch-like forms. Dalí’s unsettling combination of anatomical drawers, fire and barren space is characteristic of his Surrealist vocabulary.

The opened drawers in the woman’s body are often linked to Sigmund Freud’s theories of the subconscious. Dalí admired psychoanalysis and treated the drawers as visual metaphors for hidden thoughts and memories. Although he sometimes called himself apolitical, the painting is widely discussed in relation to the political and social trauma surrounding the Spanish Civil War.

Dalí painted it before his exile in the United States, which lasted from 1940 to 1948. The work is held by Kunstmuseum Basel. It should not be confused with The Elephants, another Dalí painting featuring spindly-legged animals, but without the flaming giraffe that defines this composition.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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