1936 was a crucial year in the career of Luis Fernández. He participated in an exhibition of Surrealist drawings at Galerie Quatre Chemins in Paris, and Alfred H. Barr and Georges Hugnet included him in the pivotal show Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism held in December at MoMA in New York, signifying the international consecration of Surrealism and the genre’s entrance into the museum. The fantastic was presented not only as a manifestation of avant-garde art, but as a motif spanning the history of art since the 15^th century.

Heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud, Luis Fernández’s work is not far removed from that same historical vision. In Composición surrealista [Surrealist Composition] he developed a personal and hermetic world which he offered to the spectator as an enigma. The testicle-shaped balloon on the top left corner is reminiscent of Œil-ballon (1878) by Odilon Redon, whose work—along with that of artists such as Salvator Rosa, and Alfred Kubin—is considered a precedent of Surrealism. This drawing conveys a sense of morbid sexuality, monstrosity, and sin, with the figure of a witch or a sorceress raising her arms to the sky alongside a haggard woman with deformed limbs who is in pain.