Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
Lot 237

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)

Sombrero de tres Picos

Closed3 February 2016

Price Realised

GBP 50,000

More Information

How to sell

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
Sombrero de tres Picos
signed, titled and dated 'Dalí 1949 "Sombrero de tres Picos"'
gouache and brush and ink on paper
10 5/8 x 13 7/8 in. (26.7 x 35.1 cm.)
Executed in 1949

Ana Maria Munar, possibly a gift from the artist.
Sabaté collection, Barcelona.
Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, 17 May 1990, lot 233.
Private collection, Barcelona, by whom acquired in the 1990s.


Specialist note

This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Robert Descharnes.

Made at the pinnacle of Dalí's involvement with the ballet, Sombrero de tres Picos is related to his design for the backcloth for Act 2 of the 1949 production of the ballet El Sombrero de Tres Picos at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York. This ballet, known in French as Le Tricorne and in English as The Three-Cornered Hat is a well-known and highly popular ballet inspired by Pedro de Alarcón's nineteenth-century comic classic El sombrero de tres picos, first staged in 1919 by Serge Diaghilev's Ballet Russes. The emphasis of the 1949 production was on the strong Spanish nature of the ballet. Spanish dancing was enjoying huge popularity in the United States in the late 1940s and in collaboration with the dancer and choreographer Ana Maria, Dalí was asked to provide an overtly Spanish feel to the production. His response was to create a distinctly Spanish landscape, reminiscent in some respects of Joan Miró's The Farm, only here populated by typically Dalinean levitating trees, and floating sacks – creating a sense of fantastical levitation visually intended to echo the movement of the dancers on the stage before it.