Artist: Salvador Dali
Title: Alexander Fleming, from Dali's Medicine and Science Suite
Year created: 1970
Medium: Hand-signed Engraving with Color on Arches Paper
Edition: 74/125 Signed & Numbered Limited Edition
Height (inches): 6.875 (image size)
Width (inches): 4.875 (image size)
Paper size: 12.875" x 9.875"
This piece is unframed.
Includes a certificate of authenticity.
Description of piece: This rare original engraving of Alexander Fleming by Salvador Dali is hand-signed and numbered 74, from the very small limited edition of only 125 pieces. This hard-to-find and highly collectible work is one of the eight portraits of historic luminaries selected by Dali for his Medicine and Science Suite, each scientist depicted being selected for their world-changing inventiveness and discoveries.
Referenced in the Official Catalog of The Graphic Works of Salvador Dali By Albert Field, Reference 80-1 A, page 144, the work is designated as "Scarce" in The Print Price Guide to the Graphic Works of Salvador Dali, by Bruce Hochman. It is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
Its austere and dignified coloration of sepia, green and black complement the solemnity of the figure of Alexander Fleming, engrossed in his work. Unexpected details surround the Fleming image, completing the work's fine composition: an iconic Dali figure; lines which transform into a roadway, which disappears into the mountainous horizon; kinetic movement in the engraved circular patterns in the lower field. A brilliant researcher, Fleming's discovery of the anti-bacterial properties of a strain of Penicillium has saved countless millions of lives the world over.
"When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionise all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did." —Alexander Fleming
This significant work, an engraving with color on Arches paper measuring 12.875" in height x 9.875 in width, has an image size of 6.875" x 4.875". The paper has a delicate deckle edge. Numbered 74/125 in the lower left corner, it prominently bears Dali's original signature, bold, in pencil, in the lower right corner.
In addition to Alexander Fleming, the other icons of Medicine and Science chosen and depicted by Dali in the Suite are Enrico Fermi, Louis Pasteur, Albert Schweitzer, Hippocrates, Jonas Salk, Marie Curie and Pierre Curie. Dali's Enrico Fermi & Louis Pasteur, also from the Medicine and Science Suite, are currently being offered to benefit the work of IDEA in additional CharityBuzz auctions.
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".