The 100 Flowers

Salvador Dalí created “The 100 Flowers” as a series of eight illustrations for a book of poems by Mao Zedong titled “The Hundred Flowers,” inspired by the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in China, where the “Hundred Flowers” were used as a metaphor for free speech, with Dalí depicting them as towering fleurs-de-lis symbolizing power, often with people attempting to reach them, sometimes including political satire in his interpretations; this was brought to his attention by Pierre Argillet during a time of great political unrest in both China and France.