Salvador Dalí

SALVADOR DALÍ I DOMÈNECH (Figueres, Girona, 1904 - 1989).
"Quixote. 1945
Ink on paper.
Signed, dated and dedicated.
Measurements: 23,5 x 15,5 cm.(each); 50 x 68 cm.(frame).

The spiral representation of Don Quixote would be a recurring motif in Dalí's work, especially in his drawings, such as the one shown here. In 1945, Salvador Dalí, attracted by the fervent personality of the Ingenious Hidalgo, made 38 drawings and watercolors to illustrate the first part of Cervantes' text. Dalí was interested in representing the duality between life and death, between the fleeting and the eternal, the dark forces of the night and those of the day, sleep and reason. And Quixote brought these contradictions together in his person.

Salvador Dalí was one of the greatest exponents of the surrealist movement. His work greatly influenced the course of surrealism during the twenties and thirties, being acclaimed as the creator of the paranoiac-critical method, an essential combination of the real with the imaginary. 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.