Artist: Salvador Dalí
Title: Moshe Dayan (from Dalí's Famous Men Suite)
Year created: 1968
Medium: Original Etching, Sanguine Ink on Rives Paper
Edition: EA (Epreuve d'Artiste / Artist's Proof) Hand-Signed Limited Edition, in Sanguine Ink on Rives Paper
Height (inches): 16-3/4
Width (inches): 12-1/2
Depth (inches): 1
Signed by the artist
Signed Area: front
This piece is framed.
Description of piece:
In 1968, Surrealist icon Salvador Dalí created his Famous Men Suite, a zeitgeist of the 1960s. Only five "Famous Men", each judiciously selected by Dalí, comprise the suite. The luminaries selected by Dalí for inclusion are Moshe Dayan, whose portrait is presented here, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, David Ben-Gurion and President John F. Kennedy.
This stunning and rare original etching of Moshe Dayan by Salvador Dalí demonstrates Dalí’s masterful draftsmanship, and his mastery of composition.
Finely rendered, with refined detailing and kinetic use of line and imagery, Dalí’s portrait of Moshe Dayan places Dayan as the focal point for the etching. Above his likeness, in the top half of the composition, floats an ethereal flag-like cloud containing a double-lined Star of David, which historically dates to the 17th century as a symbol of Judaism, and which adorns the modern flag of Israel.
An iconic Dalí-esque landscape stretches back into a distant horizon, replete with trees and mountains. Birds fly above. And midway in the composition, to Dayan’s right, stands a lone Angel in the desert, hands held forth.
The etching is hand-signed and bears the edition designation EA, an Artist’s Proof (Epreuve d'Artiste) of the very small limited edition of only 154 pieces on three paper types, with additional proofs. The tirage on Rives paper in sanguine ink consisted of only 100 etchings, of which this is an artist’s proof.
The artwork has been personally hand-signed by Dalí, lower right margin, in pencil. EA is written, lower left margin, also in pencil.
The work has been freshly framed and comes ready for display in a custom black gallery-style frame, with the artwork showcased within crisp white matting with a bright red-core, chosen to highlight the ink color of the etching. The framed size measures 16-3/4” in height x 12-1/2” width x 1” depth.
Catalogued in Dalí expert Albert Field's authoritative Official Catalog of The Graphic Works of Salvador Dalí, Reference 68-8, C, page 76; this original etching of Moshe Dayan was created by Atelier Rigal, Paris, in sanguine ink on Rives paper, and published by Jean Schneider, Basel.
Dali historian, Paul Chimera, who worked directly with the original Dali Museum, writes of this iconic suite: "Perhaps it took a great man like Salvador Dali to 'know' great men – or at least artfully depict them in various mediums.”
The artwork comes accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
Artist bio:
Salvador Dalí, born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, (1904-1989) was a prominent artist born in Figueres, Spain, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, sixteen miles from the French border, in Catalonia. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media, and he is best known for his surrealist work, including his most well-known painting, The Persistence of Memory. Highly imaginative, Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to an ancestry of descent from the medieval Moors. His individualistic nature and resistance to conformity made waves, including among his colleagues. In 1934, when Dalí was subjected to a "trial", in which he was formally expelled from the Surrealist group, Dalí retorted, "le Surrealisme c'est moi": "I myself am surrealism".