Eroticism of surrealism in the paintings of the French anarchist Clovis Troil

According to legend, the painting of the anarchist fanatic and surrealist artist Clovis Trouille "Memories" (Remembrance) in 1930 appeared at an art exhibition for the French Communist Party in the early 1930s and attracted the attention of Salvador Dali himself. The painting depicts a cardinal of the church with an open mantle, from under which women's legs in stockings are visible. On the left — two ghostly soldiers, white hares, above them a flying snake woman (Glory), scattering handfuls of medals.

"Memories" is one of the first paintings that Clovis Troye painted. He was already 41 years old at the time. He created this work under the impression of the First World War, which he passed in the ranks of the French army in his youth. Before he started painting, Trui painted the faces of mannequins for large stores. This job allowed him to follow his ideology against the system and despise everything orderly. This worldview was also the result of psychological trauma from serving in the army during the war.

With the help of a brush and paints, Trui turns authoritative figures into ridiculous ones, denouncing religious figures, policemen and functionaries in paintings on the verge of vulgarity and often with elements of BDSM.

Favorite themes in Truya's work are death and sex. After his works were recognized by such masters as Louis Aragon and Salvador Dali, the theorist of the French avant-garde Andre Breton in one of his articles called the direction in which Truy created surrealism. After that, the artist called himself a surrealist, but more for the sake of popularity, since he had no sympathy for the surrealist movement at all.