Salvador Dalí

SALVADOR DALÍ I DOMÈNECH (Figueras, Girona, 1904 - 1989).
"The Golden Age" from the series "Don Quixote".
Lithograph, copy 175/300.
Signed and justified by hand.
The frame has scratches.
Measurements: 55 x 75 cm; 66 x 87 cm (frame).

Salvador Dalí's Don Quixote series is a set of illustrations and lithographs inspired by Cervantes' Don Quixote de la Mancha, made mainly from 1957 onwards, in which the artist reinterpreted the knight and his universe in a surrealist style, very gestural and expressive, using ink blots, elongated figures, intense colors and compositions full of movement. Dalí also experimented with unconventional techniques for lithography, creating images where Don Quixote, Sancho, the windmills and horses appear almost as poetic and abstract symbols, making this series one of the most recognizable and original interpretations of Cervantes' classic in 20th century art.

Salvador Dalí was one of the leading exponents of the surrealist movement. His work greatly influenced the direction of surrealism during the 1920s and 1930s, being acclaimed as the creator of the paranoiac-critical method, an essential combination of the real and the imaginary. During his early years, Dalí discovered contemporary painting during a family visit to Cadaqués, where he met the family of Ramon Pichot, an artist who regularly traveled to Paris. Following Pichot's advice, Dalí began to study painting with Juan Núñez. In 1922, Dalí stayed at the famous Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid to begin studying Fine Arts at the San Fernando Academy. However, before his final exams in 1926, he was expelled for claiming that there was no one there fit to examine him. That same year Dalí traveled to Paris for the first time. There he met Picasso, and established some formal characteristics that would become distinctive of all his work from then on. During this period, Dalí held regular exhibitions in both Barcelona and Paris, and joined the surrealist group based in the Parisian neighborhood of Montparnasse. The painter landed in America in 1934, thanks to art dealer Julian Levy. As a result of his first individual exhibition in New York, his international projection was definitively consolidated, and since then he has been showing his work and giving lectures all over the world. 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.