Salvador Dalí

SALVADOR DALÍ I DOMÈNECH (Figueras, Girona, 1904 - 1989).
"The persistence of memory", 1981.
Silver-plated bronze, copy 159/1000.
Signed and justified.
Ed. Atelier Guillard, Gordon, Paris.
Attached certificate issued by the Surrealist Gallery, Barcelona.
Measurements: 63 cm (height without stand); 70 x 32 x 27 cm (total with stand).

The motif of the melted clock has probably been the most praised of Dalí's surrealist objects. In the painting "The Persistence of Memory" (1931), soft clocks slipped from their supports and slid through an arid terrain of metaphysical cadences. The silver sculptural clock shown here seems to unravel like a liquid gem, suggesting to us that linear and objective time does not exist, but is malleable and subjective, playful and elastic like this clock whose dial and Arabic numerals are elongated and distorted by the effect of gravity. Dalí, a great reader of Freud, supported the Freudian concept of the "elasticity of psychic time" (that of memory and dreams) and managed to give it a unique visual form. It should also be noted that Dalí's works with melted clocks contain an underlying critique of the rigidity of time in modern society, where people are often dominated by the clock and the concept of linear time.

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 regularly traveled 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 traveled to Paris for the first time. There he met Picasso, and established some formal characteristics that would become distinctive of all his work from then on. During this period, Dalí held regular exhibitions in both Barcelona and Paris, and joined the surrealist group based in the Parisian neighborhood of Montparnasse. The painter landed in America in 1934, thanks to art dealer Julian Levy. As a result of his first individual exhibition in New York, his international projection was definitively consolidated, and since then he has been showing his work and giving lectures all over the world. Most of his production is gathered 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) or the Dalí Universe in London.