Salvador Dalí

SALVADOR DALÍ I DOMÈNECH (Figueras, Girona, 1904–1989).
“The Divine Comedy. Purgatory, Canto 16.”
Woodcut, print no. 50/100.
Signed on the plate, signed and inscribed in pencil.
It has a slight diagonal stain.
Measurements: 29.5 x 21 cm; 49 x 37 cm (frame).

Part of Dalí’s series of illustrations for Dante’s “The Divine Comedy,” the composition combines figures of classical inspiration with a dreamlike atmosphere. The faces emerge from barely defined bodies, whose contours extend in fluid lines, while a dark presence introduces spectral hallmarks. The range of grayish greens and the transparency of the forms reinforce the sense of apparition, in keeping with the artist’s surrealist universe. The print retains the watercolor-like effect of the original compositions that gave rise to the series, in which Dalí translated Dante’s spiritual journey into his own visual language.

A leading figure of 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.