In 1925, a young Salvador Dali dabbled in cubism and painted in abstract black, white and grey.
He also painted a scene that he called Desnudo en el Agua (Nude in the Water), which gives an inkling of the surrealist genius to come.
The painting is a close-up of a woman's shapely buttocks, and the unique perspective reveals that Dali was looking at subjects and paintings in a whole new way as a young artist.
"He's not doing an academic perspective," notes Hank Hine, the director of the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg.
That subtly erotic work, along with 11 others, is on display at the Florida museum until March 31, 2013, in a show called The Royal Inheritance: Dali Works From the Spanish National Collection.
The paintings, which span from 1918 to 1983, have never before been exhibited the United States.
