Which 1939 Salvador Dalí painting is titled The Enigma of Hitler?

Salvador Dalí’s 1939 painting titled The Enigma of Hitler is The Enigma of Hitler.

Dalí painted the work as Europe moved toward the Second World War. It presents a telephone, a photograph-like image of Adolf Hitler, a large empty landscape, and other ominous details. Rather than offering a clear political narrative, the composition creates a mood of uncertainty and obsession around Hitler’s public image.

The painting belongs to Dalí’s late-1930s period of anxious, politically charged imagery. Its ambiguous symbolism has led historians and viewers to debate whether Dalí’s response was fear, fascination, or deliberate psychological provocation. The title itself makes Hitler the central subject even though the figure is not shown as a conventional portrait.

The work is sometimes confused with The Face of War, another antiwar image by Dalí from 1940. The two paintings share a dark historical atmosphere, but only one is explicitly titled The Enigma of Hitler.