Still Life: Fish with Red Bowl  (1923-1924)

Dalí probably painted Still Life: Fish with Red Bowl during his brief suspension from Madrid's Academy of Fine Arts for supposedly inciting a student riot.  It's an academic study revealing Dali's eye for genre detail and a growing concern with compostition.  The colors in Fish with Red Bowl are somewhat muted, and cool blues predominate.  With his careful placement of the bowl and the fish, Dali creates a very pleasing composition.  Our eyes move around the composition in a circular pattern, and the fish are placed on diagonals in opposing directions to keep the arrangement from becoming too static.