Salvador Dalí

SALVADOR DALÍ I DOMÈNECH, (Figueras, Girona, 1904 - 1989).
"Don Quixote and the Cosmic Eye". 1975.
Ink on postcard.
Signed and dated.
Measurements: 10 x 14,5 cm; 25 x 29,5 cm (frame).

This postcard is a valuable example because it is a spontaneous intervention that condenses the personal universe in an everyday object. On the back, entitled "Dalí at work", Dalí has made a series of quick, calligraphic drawings in blue ballpoint pen ink. The drawn elements are: the schematic representation of Don Quixote, with lance and shield (Dalí was obsessed, throughout his life, with Cervantes' character); a cosmic eye from which parabolic lines radiate, landing on a small planet drawn with a spiral. The postcard is dated with large numbers "1975", written in his characteristic handwriting.

Painter and sculptor, Salvador Dalí was one of the leading exponents of the surrealist movement. He made his individual debut in 1925, at the Dalmau Galleries in Barcelona. In 1926, after being expelled for indiscipline from the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, he went to Paris. There he met the young Picasso and, four years later, he joined the surrealist movement. Dalí's production in this period is based on Freud's theories, acclaimed by Breton: representation of dreamlike images and everyday objects in unsuspected and surprising compositional forms. Some of the characteristics of his work at this time became distinctive of all his later work. He also absorbed the influences of diverse artistic styles, from classical academicism to the most groundbreaking avant-garde. His work greatly influenced the direction of surrealism during the following years, being acclaimed as the creator of the paranoiac-critical method, an essential combination of the real and the imaginary. As a result of his first individual exhibition in New York in 1934, his international projection was definitively consolidated. 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.