Salvador Dalí

SALVADOR DALÍ I DOMÈNECH, (Figueras, Girona, 1904 - 1989).
"Study for a dream / Life is a dream". 1975.
Drawing made on an artist's book page with an etching: "La vida es sueño" (Calderón de la Barca).
Ink, blue wash and pencil.
Dedicated, signed, located in Barcelona and dated by hand by the artist.
Measurements: 38 x 54,5 cm (paper); 56 x 74,5 cm (frame).

The drawing presents a dreamlike composition, characteristic of Dalí's imaginary, made on a page of the artist's book "Life is a dream", with an etching engraving. It was an illustrated edition of the novel by Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

Dalí deploys a dreamlike and open composition, in which the drawing in ink, blue gouache and pencil overlaps and interacts with the existing engraving. The left half is dominated by wide spaces of emptiness and blue glazes, suggesting aerial atmospheres and states of suspension, reinforcing the idea of dream and transience. These passages contrast with the expressive density of the right half.

There emerges a fantastic figure of anthropomorphic character, constructed by means of nervous strokes, ink stains and circular lines, as if the body were in a process of formation or dissolution. The crown that crowns the head establishes a direct reference to the universe of La vida es sueño and to the figure of Segismundo, the Calderonian incarnation of the conflict between power, destiny and freedom. The exaggerated gestures and formal instability reinforce the dramatic and theatrical component inherited from the Baroque, reinterpreted from Dalí's surrealism.

In the lower part, scattered elements appear -graphic signs, an isolated eye, loose lines- that allude to the act of seeing and waking up, recurring motifs in Dalí's iconography as well as in Calderón's philosophical reflection on the border between dream and reality.

The combined use of ink, blue gouache and pencil establishes a dialogue between control and chance, form and dissolution, which visually translates the central tension of Life is a Dream: the instability of existence and the illusory condition of reality.