SALVADOR DALà I DOMÈNECH (Figueras, Girona, 1904 - 1989).
"Lilium longiflorum vel tempus" (Surrealist Flowers), 1972.
Engraving on Arches paper, copy E.A.
Signed and justified by hand.
Referenced in "The Official Catalog of the Graphic Works of Salvador Dali", Albert Field, 1996, 168-169.
Size: 58 x 39 cm (print); 75 x 55 cm (paper); 80 x 60 cm (frame).
In the 1960s and 1970s, Dalí produced various floral suites in which, based on ancient botanical engravings, he reinvented the forms, transforming scientific rigour into imaginative exuberance. Thus, passion flowers were given eyes and lips, lilies sprouted gelatinous clocks, carnations metamorphosed their leaves into butterflies, other species were transmuted into horses or their petals grew telephone handsets.... The combinations were endless.
During his early years, Dalí discovered contemporary painting during a family visit to Cadaqués, where he met the family of Ramon Pichot, an artist who travelled regularly to Paris. Following Pichot's advice, Dalí began to study painting with Juan Núñez. In 1922, Dalí stayed at the famous Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid to begin studying Fine Arts at the San Fernando Academy. However, before his final exams in 1926, he was expelled for claiming that there was no one there fit to examine him. That same year Dalí travelled to Paris for the first time. There he met Picasso, and established certain formal characteristics that would become distinctive of all his work from then on. His language absorbed the influences of many artistic styles, from classical academicism to the most groundbreaking avant-garde. At that time, the painter grew an eye-catching moustache in imitation of Velázquez's, which was to become his personal trademark for the rest of his life. In 1929, Dalí collaborated with Luis Buñuel in the making of "An Andalusian Dog", which depicted scenes typical of the surrealist imaginary. In August of the same year he met his muse and future wife Gala. During this period Dalí held regular exhibitions in both Barcelona and Paris, and joined the Surrealist group based in the Montparnasse district of Paris. His work greatly influenced the direction of Surrealism for the next two years, and he was hailed as the originator of the paranoiac-critical method, which was said to help access the subconscious by releasing creative artistic energies. In 1931 Dalí painted one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory, in which, according to some theories, he illustrated his rejection of time as a rigid or deterministic entity. The painter landed in America in 1934, thanks to the art dealer Julian Levy. As a result of his first solo exhibition in New York, his international reputation was definitively consolidated and from then on he showed his work and gave lectures all over the world. That same year he was subjected to a "surrealist trial" which resulted in his expulsion from the movement, on the grounds that the painter considered that Surrealism could exist in an apolitical context, refusing to commit himself to the ideas of André Breton. To this, Dalí responded with his famous retort, "I am Surrealism". Most of his work is housed in the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueras, followed by the collection of the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg (Florida), the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Salvador Dalí Gallery in Pacific Palisades (California), the Espace Dalí in Montmartre (Paris) and the Dalí Universe in London.