Salvador Dalí

SALVADOR DALÍ I DOMÈNECH (Figueras, Girona, 1904 - 1989).
"Homme baisant la chaussure". Series "Venus in furs" 1969.
Drypoint engraving with watercolor, copy 37/145.
Signed and numbered by hand. Signed in plate.
Measurements: 15 x 12 cm (tread); 38 x 28,5 cm.(paper).

"Homme baisant la chaussure" (Man kissing a shoe), belongs to the series Dalí made in 1969 to illustrate "Venus in Furs" by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, a major work in the literature of psychological eroticism and origin of the term "masochism". Dalí approaches the writer's universe through a graphic language where desire, submission, fetishism and emotional ambiguity are translated into images of intense symbolic charge. The artist does not limit himself to illustrating the text: he dalinizes it, taking it to his paranoiac-critical terrain, where anatomy is twisted, sensuality becomes disturbing and objects -such as the shoe, here turned into a fetish- acquire a ritual dimension.

In this work, the bent figure kissing the shoe embodies the essence of Sacher-Masoch's story: the fascination and surrender to an idealized and dominant woman. Dalí accentuates this tension through a drypoint of great precision, which defines the psychologically intense profiles of the face, and through touches of watercolor that add chromatic sensuality and an ambiguous atmosphere. The yellow of the hair and the pink of the skin suggest both vulnerability and eroticism, while the undulating, nervous line reinforces the obsessive nature of desire.