The Burning Giraffe (1937) is a painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. Dalí painted Burning Giraffe before his exile in the United States which was from 1940 to 1948. Although Dalí declared himself apolitical— "I am Dalí, and only that"—this painting shows his personal struggle with the battle in his home country. Characteristic are the opened drawers in the blue female figure, which Dalí on a later date described as "Femme-coccyx" (tail bone woman). This phenomenon can be traced back to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical method, much admired by Dalí. He regarded him as an enormous step forward for civilization, as shown in the following quote. "The only difference between immortal Greece and our era is Sigmund Freud who discovered that the human body, which in Greek times was mer