Salvador Dalí

SALVADOR DALÍ I DOMÈNECH (Figueras, Girona, 1904 - 1989).
"La creu de Sant Narcís", 1959.
Watercolor on paper.
Attached certificate of authenticity Robert Descharnes issued in March 1985.
It includes the book "Dalí and the flies" where the work is reproduced (page 18).
It presents labels on the back of the Tokio Gallery and the town hall of Cadaqués.
Framed in museum glass.
Measurements: 11 x 140 cm; 46 x 45 cm (frame).
Exhibitions:
- Saint Narcís Dalí and Les Mosques. Girona, October 1986.
- Dalí. Works on paper 1916-1980. Cadaqués Museum. Cadaqués, 1996 (Cat. No. 110).
Dalí made this work on the occasion of the awarding of the Gold Medal of the province by the Provincial Council of Girona. The iconography is inspired by the legend of Saint Narcissus, according to which, when in the 13th century the French army desecrated his tomb, thousands of poisonous flies miraculously emerged from the tomb to expel the invaders. This prodigious episode, deeply rooted in Girona tradition, became a recurring motif in Dalí's imagination.
The presence of insects, and in particular flies, is in fact a frequent theme in Dalí's work. The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation has a photograph (cat. P 1184) showing Gala seated on a sofa under a large composition dedicated to the same subject, which is evidence of the persistence of the motif in his production. The artist also made a bronze sculpture entitled Saint Narcissus and the Flies (Collection of the Center for Art and Nature, inv. 00080), which reinforces his interest in this hagiographic episode.
In Diary of a Genius, Dalí went so far as to state that "flies are the muses of the Mediterranean", since, according to him, they brought inspiration to the Greek philosophers who spent long hours lying in the sun, covered with these insects. This personal conception connects with the surrealist reinterpretation that the artist applies to the miracle of Saint Narcissus.
Painter and sculptor, Salvador Dalí was one of the greatest 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.