Figura en una finestra (Figure at the Window)

According to Rafael Santos Torroella, one of the great Salvador Dalí scholars, between 1923 and 1926 the painter did at least a dozen portraits of his sister Anna Maria, including the two in the Museo Reina Sofía collection, Figura en una finestra (Figure at the Window) and Retrato (Portrait). After they were shown in 1925 at the Dalmau gallery, certain critics, including Folch i Torres, linked Dalí’s portraits to Catalan Noucentisme. According to Dalí himself in his book The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, Picasso praised the pictures after his visit to the Dalmau gallery, and there is no doubt that they contain a certain echo of Picassian Classicism.
Figura en una finestra is perhaps the absolute masterpiece of the series of portraits of Anna Maria. Rafael Santos Torroella stated that the painting is “a marvel for the skill with which it combines the occupied spaces and the empty spaces, giving them equal compositional importance to such an extent that the fact that he has simply eliminated one of the window casements (the left one) escapes the viewer, who does not even notice the anomaly, despite the fact that this is precisely where so much of the enigmatic beauty radiating from the painting, with its pure serenity, resides.”

Paloma Esteban Leal