Artist: Salvador Dalí
Title: Dalinean Prophecy
Year created: 1975
Medium: Original Etching with Pochoir Hand-Coloring, on Japon Paper
Edition: XLI/LXXV (41/75) Hand-Signed & Numbered Limited Edition, from the rare Roman Numeral Limited Edition in English on Japon Paper. This piece accompanied, as the eleventh artwork, only the rare Roman Numeral Limited Edition in English on Japon Paper, of the ten-piece Imaginations and Objects of the Future suite.
Height (inches): 27
Width (inches): 39
Depth (inches): 1-1/8
Signed by the artist
Signed Area: front
This piece is framed.
Description of piece:
In this rare artwork, Dalinean Prophecy, Dalí has created a self-portrait of himself as Leonardo da Vinci. Clothed in garments of the High Renaissance, the Dalí / da Vinci figure is depicted holding a compass (reflecting da Vinci’s invention of the parabolic compass). Symbolic lines evocative of thought, imagination and inventiveness emanate from the figure’s head and mind, connecting to colored spheres of green, orange, blue and yellow— each containing an “invention”.
Dalí’s mastery of composition is evident in his beautiful use of line and circle; geometry and color; combined with classic Dalí-esque landscape and horizon. The choice of Japon paper adds a wonderful texture and extra dimensionality to the work.
~ In the early 1970s gallerist Robert Chase proposed to Salvador Dalí the concept of Dalí picturing himself as the 20th century Leonardo da Vinci, giving to the world what he imagined the future would hold.
Knowing that Dalí greatly admired da Vinci as both a thinker and a creative genius was still not adequate preparation for Dalí’s reaction to the concept. Dalí reportedly rolled his eyes as indication of an extraordinary epiphany, and (please imagine the artist speaking in an outrageously exaggerated French-Catalan accent) he loudly exclaimed, "Fantastique! Bravo! Dal-i create the fu-ture!"
And thus Dalí created his imaginatively creative and predictively futuristic "Imaginations and Objects of the Future”— a suite of ten drypoint etchings combined with lithography, added color by the method of pochoir, and collage. Each a surrealist masterpiece, the suite included artworks predicting self-driving cars, smart-phones, and more, all through the fantastical lens of Dalí, as the modern da Vinci.
The Imaginations and Objects of the Future suite was created on several paper types, in various small editions in French and English. The total tirage was only 600 sets (including all paper types and languages), each enclosed in a special wooden box. Of these 600, only one very special limited edition was created— of only 75 sets, on Japon paper, in English, and numbered in Roman Numerals I/LXXV - LXXV/LXXV. What made it exceptional was that it contained an extra print: that of Dalinean Prophecy— this work is essentially the visual and conceptual titular piece as it embodies the inspiration and premise for the entire suite. It depicts Dalí as Leonardo da Vinci, and each of the ten other accompanying works in the suite are all imagined inventions of the future; imagined by Dalí as da Vinci. ~
Dalinean Prophecy is hand-signed by Dalí in pencil, lower right margin. The work bears the edition number XLI/LXXV (41/75), lower left margin.
Stored flat since 1975, and now framed for the first time (hinged with easily removable tape), it comes placed in a lightweight, wide black frame with custom acid-free matting in cream. Framed size measures 27" in height x 39" width x 1-1/8" depth.
Catalogued in Dalí expert Albert Field's authoritative Official Catalog of The Graphic Works of Salvador Dalí, Reference 75-11 tirage notes, page 104, Dalinean Prophecy was created by Desjobert (lithographs), Rigal (engravings), and published by Merrill Chase, Chicago / Alan Rich, New York.
Dalinean Prophecy is 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".
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