SALVADOR DALI (Spanish 1904-1989)

MEDIUM: COLORED ETCHING

PENCIL SIGNED BY SALVADOR DALI

EA ARTIST PROOF

GAD FROM THE TWELVE TRIBES OF ISRAEL

LIMITED EDITION

1972

GOOD CONDITION. MILD WRINKLES AS SHOWN.

PROVENANCE: PRIVATE COLLECTION, BEVERLY HILLS CA.

GOOD OVERALL CONDITION.

DIMENSIONS INCLUDING THE FRAME: 27”H x 33”W

Salvador Dali Born: 1904 - Figueras, Spain

Died: 1989 - Figueras, Spain

Known for: Surrealist painting, drawing, photography, sculpture

Name variants: Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí Y Domenech, Salvador Dali Domenech

Salvador Dali Twelve Tribes of Israel – 1972

The Twelve Tribes of Israel was published in 1972. .

Salvador Dali was born in May 11, 1904 in the small agricultural town of Figueres, Spain, located in the foothills of the Pyrenees, only sixteen miles from the French border in the principality of Catalonia. The son of a prosperous notary, Salvador Dali spent his boyhood in Figueres and at the family's summer home in the coastal fishing village of Cadaques where his parents built his first studio. As an adult, he made his home with his wife Gala in nearby Port Lligat. Many of his paintings reflect his love of this area of Spain.

The young Salvador Dali attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Early recognition of Salvador Dali's talent came with his first one-man show in Barcelona in 1925. He became internationally known when three of his paintings, including The Basket of Bread (now in the Museum's collection), were shown in the third annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928.

The following year, Dalí held his first one-man show in Paris. He also joined the surrealists, led by former Dadaist Andre Breton. That year, Dali met Gala Eluard when she visited him in Cadaques with her husband, poet Paul Eluard. She became Dalí's lover, muse, business manager, and chief inspiration.

Dalí soon became a leader of the surrealist movement. His painting, The Persistance of Memory, with the soft or melting watches is still one of the best-known surrealist works. But as the war approached, the apolitical Dalí clashed with the surrealists and was "expelled" from the surrealist group during a "trial" in 1934. He did however, exhibit works in international surrealist exhibitions throughout the decade but by 1940, Dali was moving into a new style that eventually became known as his "classic" period, demonstrating a preoccupation with science and religion.

Dalí and Gala escaped from Europe during World War II, spending 1940-48 in the United States. These were very important years for the artist. The Museum of Modern Art in New York gave Dali his first major retrospective exhibit in 1941. This was followed in 1942 by the publication of Dali's autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer. After passing through phases of Cubism, Futurism and Metaphysical painting, he joined the Surrealists in 1929 and his talent for self-publicity rapidly made him the most famous representative of the movement. Throughout his life he cultivated eccentricity and exhibitionism (one of his most famous acts was appearing in a diving suit at the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition in 1936), claiming that this was the source of his creative energy. He took over the Surrealist theory of automatism but transformed it into a more positive method which he named `critical paranoia'.

According to this theory one should cultivate genuine delusion as in clinical paranoia while remaining residually aware at the back of one's mind that the control of the reason and will has been deliberately suspended. He claimed that this method should be used not only in artistic and poetical creation but also in the affairs of daily life. His paintings employed a meticulous academic technique that was contradicted by the unreal `dream' space he depicted and by the strangely hallucinatory characters of his imagery. He described his pictures as `hand-painted dream photographs' and had certain favorite and recurring images, such as the human figure with half-open drawers protruding from it, burning giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as if made from melting wax (The Persistence of Memory, MOMA, New York; 1931).

In 1937 Dalí visited Italy and adopted a more traditional style; this together with his political views (he was a supporter of General Franco) led Breton to expel him from the Surrealist ranks. He moved to the USA in 1940 and remained there until 1955. During this time he devoted himself largely to self-publicity; his paintings were often on religious themes (The Crucifixion of St John of the Cross, Glasgow Art Gallery, 1951), although sexual subjects and pictures centering on his wife Gala were also continuing preoccupations. In 1955 he returned to Spain and in old age became a recluse.

As Dali moved away from Surrealism and into his classic period, he began his series of 19 large canvases, many concerning scientific, historical or religous themes. Among the best known of these works are The Hallucinogenic Toreador, and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in the museum's collection, and The Sacrament of the Last Supper in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

In 1974, Dalí opened the Teatro Museo in Figueres, Spain. This was followed by retrospectives in Paris and London at the end of the decade. After the death of his wife, Gala, in 1982, Dali's health began to fail. It deteriorated further after he was burned in a fire in his home in Pubol in 1984. Two years later, a pace-maker was implanted. Much of this part of his life was spent in seclusion, first in Pubol and later in his apartments at Torre Galatea, adjacent to the Teatro Museo. Salvador Dalí died on January 23, 1989 in Figueres from heart failure with respiratory complications.

As an artist, Salvador Dalí was not limited to a particular style or media. The body of his work, from early impressionist paintings through his transitional surrealist works, and into his classical period, reveals a constantly growing and evolving artist. Dali worked in all media, leaving behind a wealth of oils, watercolors, drawings, graphics, and sculptures, jewels and objects of all descriptions. Apart from painting, Dalí's output included sculpture, book illustration, jewellery design, and work for the theatre. In collaboration with the director Luis Buñuel he also made the first Surrealist films---Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Age d'or (1930)---and he contributed a dream sequence to Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). He also wrote a novel, Hidden Faces (1944) and several volumes of flamboyant autobiography. Although he is undoubtedly one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, his status is controversial; many critics consider that he did little if anything of consequence after his classic Surrealist works of the 1930s. There are museums devoted to Dalí's work in Figueras, his home town in Spain, and in St Petersburg in Florida.

1904: Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí was born on May, 11th in Figueras, Catalonia, Spain.

1917: He started to visit the School of Art. First paintings.

1918: First small exhibition in the Theatre.

1921-25: Went to Academy of Arts in Madrid. Conflicts with his teachers.

1925: First stand-alone exibition of Dalí at the Galery of Dalmau.

1926-28: Early explorations of the Surrealism. Dalí in Cadaqués 1927

1929: Gala went into his life. Joined the group of Surrealists in 1930 Gala 1927, and Dalí 1929

1934-37: Dalí had his paranoid-critic-epoch. Dalí and Gala in 1937

1941-44: "Avida Dollars" in America.

1945-49: Dalí the Classic. Dalí and his Daddy in Cadaqués 1948

1950-65: His mystic period. He wrote several books (The secret life of Salvador Dalí).

1963-78: Dalí the Divine - Dalí and the Science.

1979-83: Theory of Disaster.

1982: Gala died.

1989: Dalí, Jan. 23th, died.

Whether working from pure inspiration or on a commissioned illustration, Dalí's matchless insight and symbolic complexity are apparent. Above all, Dalí was a superb draftsman. His excellence as a creative artist will always set a standard for the art of the twentieth century.

"Every morning when I wake up I experience an exquisite joy—the joy of being Salvador Dalí—and I ask myself in rapture, 'What wonderful things this Salvador Dalí is going to accomplish today?'" —Salvador Dalí.

Museums:

Boca Raton Museum of Art (Boca Raton, FL)

Community Fine Arts Center (Rock Springs, WY)

Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art (Denver, CO)

Kresge Art Museum (East Lansing, MI)

Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY)

Pensacola Museum Of Art (Pensacola, FL)

Print Club of Albany (Schenectady, NY)

R W Norton Art Gallery (Shreveport, LA)

Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art (Loretto, PA)

Tate Modern/Tate Gallery, London (London, United Kingdom)

The Canton Museum of Art (Canton, OH)

The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (Norman, OK)

The Grace Museum (Abilene, TX)

The Phillips Museum of Art (Lancaster, PA)

University of Wyoming Art Museum (Laramie, WY)

Washington County Museum of Fine Arts (Hagerstown, MD)