Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
Lot 147 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE SWISS COLLECTION

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)

Cervantes

Closed23 June 2016

Price Realised

GBP 92,500

More Information

How to sell

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
Cervantes
signed 'GALA DALÍ' (lower right)
gouache on paper
image: 19 3/8 x 22 1/4 in. (49 x 56.5 cm.)
sheet: 22 1/8 x 22 3/8 in. (56.3 x 57 cm.)
Executed in 1975

Galeria Manuel Barbié, Barcelona (no. 7948).
Anonymous sale, Christie's, London, 7 February 2013, lot 280.
Private collection, Switzerland, acquired at the above sale, and thence by descent.

Specialist note

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

In this design for a painted ceiling pendentive, Dalí has skilfully manipulated the shape of the triangular segment of a spherical surface in order to simultaneously create a homage to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedrea. In the early 1960s Dalí executed 26 works illustrating Cervantes’ El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. Extremely varied in its graphic style and entrancing with its phantasmagorical imagery, Dalí’s later 1965 series of illustrations for Don Quijote de la Mancha confirms the artist’s fascination for one of the most influential works of Spanish literature. Indeed, Dalí had already illustrated the novel in 1946 for Random House, and returned to the theme again in 1957 in a series of lithographs, published by Joseph Forêt in [Pages choisies de] Don Quichotte de la Manche.