Paysage aux papillons 1973

Paysage aux papillons, or Landscape with Butterflies, is an undated painting by Salvador Dalí. Dalí, writing and painting from the turbulent early to mid-20th century, navigated personal and collective anxieties through his surrealist works. Here, in a characteristically sparse landscape, four butterflies are impaled, their delicate beauty fixed in place. Dalí often explored themes of transformation and decay; butterflies, symbols of metamorphosis, suggest a deeper meditation on the impermanence of beauty and life. The open landscape, rendered with a hard vanishing point, creates a sense of isolation, hinting at the artist's preoccupation with mortality and the subconscious. Dalí once stated, "The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad." This painting, with its unsettling juxtaposition of beauty and violence, invites us to confront the fragile balance between sanity and madness, life and death.