Salvador Dalí

SALVADOR DALÍ (Figueres, Girona, 1904–1989).
“La dame de trèfle” (The Queen of Clubs), 1967.
Study for a deck of cards.
Colored crayons and black marker on tracing paper.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Certificates of authenticity issued by Robert and Nicolas Descharnes are included.
Measurements: 40 x 27 cm; 74 x 60 cm (frame).

Created in 1967, this original work on paper is part of a unique phase in Salvador Dalí’s oeuvre, dedicated to the artistic reinterpretation of traditional playing cards. That year, the artist developed a series of designs for a deck of cards commissioned by the prestigious Parisian silverware firm Puiforcat and printed by Draeger. The project demonstrates his ability to translate the surrealist imagination into the realm of the applied arts, transforming the conventions of popular iconography. The existence of other preparatory drawings from this series—including a composition dedicated to the Queen of Clubs documented by Christie’s—allows us to contextualize this piece within that creative process.

The composition retains the symmetrical and reversible structure of traditional playing cards, although it has undergone a profound formal transformation. The female figure, crowned and depicted through intersecting geometric planes, features an intense combination of reds, greens, yellows, and blues, outlined by thick black lines. The fragmentation of the forms, with Cubist overtones, coexists with Dalí’s characteristic imaginative freedom, resulting in an image of great graphic power. Particularly significant is the spontaneity of the drawing, in which the marker lines and colored surfaces reveal the experimental nature of the composition and its status as an original study.

The work is accompanied by certificates of authenticity issued by Robert and Nicolas Descharnes. The latter, a close collaborator of the painter for decades, was one of his principal biographers and a key authority on the cataloging of his artistic output.

A leading figure in Surrealism, Salvador Dalí trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid and joined the Parisian Surrealist movement in the late 1920s. His paranoiac-critical method and his universe of dreamlike images contributed decisively to the renewal of the avant-garde’s artistic language. Beginning in the 1940s, he expanded his explorations into classicism, science, religion, and the applied arts, developing a body of work that encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, film, design, and graphic art. His work is represented in institutions such as MoMA in New York, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, as well as the Dalí Theater-Museum in Figueres.