Meditative Rose (Rosa Meditativa) 1958 by Salvador Dali, Oil on canvas 36 x 28 cm. The Rose Meditative painting is something of an enigma coming from a painter whose works are primarily the stuff of dream and nightmare. Absent are the stretched forms and crutches signifying the paranoiac method. Instead we have a pretty picture. Here Dali seems to be showing off his painting skills at a time when many famous artists (including Dali himself) were painting in a much more abstract manner. Perhaps he was preparing himself for the Homage to Surrealism Exhibition which his friend Andre Breton had asked the artist as well as Joan Miro to exhibit in and represent Spain.