From Dalí's work, figures with drawers are almost as well known to the public as his "soft watches", particularly his sculpture Venus de Milo with Drawers. In order to paint this figure of a woman half-lying on the ground, Dalí did several very elaborate preliminary drawings in pencil and in ink. They were all executed at Edward James's residence in London, where Dalí was living. It is probably there that he began the picture. Anthropomorphic Cabinet was exhibited, for the first time, in London in 1936 at the Lefevre Gallery. Dalí, who had been a great admirer of Freud for many years, purposely wished to depict here in images the psychoanalytical theories of the great Viennese professor, saying apropos these subjects that "they are kinds of allegories destined to illustrate a certain complacency, to smell the innumerable narcissistic odors emanating from each one of our drawers," and more precisely later, "The unique difference between immortal Greece and the contemporary epoch is Sigm
