Salvador Dalí

SALVADOR DALÍ I DOMÈNECH (Figueras, Girona, 1904 - 1989).
"Naked Gala riding a bureaucratic centaur in the bay of Portlligat in the moonlight".
Ink on paper.
Attached certificate of authenticity Robert Descharnes.
Framed in museum glass.
Presents stamp of the Perrot-Moore collection.
Signed in the upper right corner.
Provenance: Jean Claude Roussel (1922-1972), president of the Roussel-Uclaf laboratories.
Measurements: 14 x 11 cm; 35 x 32 cm (frame).
This drawing by Salvador Dalí, made on a sheet of correspondence from the St. Regis Hotel in New York, whose letterhead is stamped on the back, is an eloquent example of the application of his paranoiac-critical method, based on delirious association and the generation of double or metamorphic images arising from the unconscious. The composition presents a nude female figure, identifiable as Gala, riding a centaur of organic and ambiguous forms, whose extremities and volumes recall the human body unfolded and transformed, while the scene is set before a landscape that refers to the bay of Portlligat. The handwritten inscription alludes to a title characteristic of Dalí's poetics: "Naked Gala riding a bureaucratic centaur in the bay of Portlligat in the moonlight", a statement that combines eroticism, mythology and ironic humor, reinforcing the dreamlike and at the same time rationalized character of what is represented. The protagonism of Gala is central: muse, constant presence and catalyst of Dalí's imagination, appears here as an active figure that dominates the hybrid being, becoming the symbolic and affective axis of creation.
As a whole, the drawing is presented as a direct testimony of Dalí's intimate and creative universe, where controlled automatism, metamorphosis and the presence of Gala converge to configure an image as disturbing as it is poetically coherent.
The reverse also retains the seal of the Perrot Moore collection; John Peter Moore, Dalí's secretary for two decades, a key figure in the management and dissemination of his work, which underlines the historical journey of the drawing.
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 from the San Fernando School of Fine Arts for indiscipline, 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.