Dorothea Tanning painted the 1943 Surrealist work Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, showing two figures beside a giant sunflower.
The title refers to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s famous serenade, whose German name means “a little night music.” Tanning’s painting, however, is not a musical illustration. It presents a dreamlike hotel corridor with a large sunflower, a torn-open doorway and two young female figures, creating a tense scene of transformation and uncertainty.
Tanning was an American artist who became closely associated with the Surrealist circle in New York and later in France. She worked across painting, sculpture, poetry and fiction. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is frequently discussed alongside her other psychologically charged images, but it should not be confused with a painting by Max Ernst or Salvador Dalí. The sunflower also appears elsewhere in Tanning’s imagery, where it can suggest both vitality and menace.