Salvador Dalí

SALVADOR DALÍ (Figueres, Girona, 1904 - 1989)
"Female nude", 1962.
Graphite on paper.
Certificate issued by Robert Descharnes, dated November 25, 1987.
Provenance:-Galería Surrealista, S.A., Barcelona. -Private collection, Barcelona.
Exhibitions: Salvador Dalí. Anthology on paper, 1916-1980, Museu de Cadaqués, 1996, p. 85, fig. 116.
Measurements: 78 x 42 cm; 108 x 72,5 cm (with frame).

The female nude was a recurring motif in Dalí's production, approached from different perspectives throughout his career. In the present drawing, with its extremely light and refined line, the image moves away from the artist's best known theatricality to show an intimate and contained facet, centered on the purity of the line and formal suggestion.

The figure appears barely suggested on the paper; she raises her arms and flexes one leg in a sensual and uninhibited attitude of suggestive contrapposto. It is constructed from tenuous lines that delimit the torso, chest, hips and legs with great economy of means.

The work stands out for its synthetic character and for the delicacy of the drawing, where Dalí dispenses with any excessive descriptive burden to concentrate on the essential line of the female body. This graphic lightness gives the composition an almost evanescent quality, in which the emptiness of the paper acquires as much importance as the figure itself.

The piece is certified by Robert Descharnes and was included in the exhibition "Salvador Dalí. Antológica sobre paper, 1916-1980", held at the Museu de Cadaqués in 1996, which reinforces its documentary interest and its relevance within the artist's work on paper.

Internationally acclaimed after the retrospective that the MOMA in New York dedicated to him in 1941, Joan Miró has won awards such as the Grand Prizes of the Venice Biennale and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Prize for Painting, the Gold Medals of the Generalitat de Catalunya and of Fine Arts, etc. His work can currently be seen at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, as well as in important museums around the world, such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza, the MOMA in New York, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the National Gallery in Washington, the MNAM in Paris and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.