Artist: Salvador Dalí
Title: Anti-Umbrella with Atomized Liquids (from Dalí's Imaginations & Objects of the Future portfolio)
Year created: 1975
Medium: Original Etching and Lithograph with Pochoir Hand-Coloring and Collage, 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
Height (inches): 39-1/2
Width (inches): 27
Signed by the artist
Signed Area: front
This piece is framed.
This surrealist masterpiece from Salvador Dalí, Anti-Umbrella with Atomized Liquids, is from Dalí’s significant Imaginations and Objects of the Future portfolio.
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 (the artist speaking in an outrageously exaggerated French-Catalan accent) Dalí 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 extravagantly surrealist, the suite included artworks predicting self-driving cars and smart-phones, along with inventions that could only have come from the extraordinary imagination of the artist— all expressed through the fantastical lens of Dalí, as the modern da Vinci.
Composed of original etching, lithograph, color hand-applied by pochoir method, and collage, Anti-Umbrella with Atomized Liquids is hand-signed by Dalí, lower right margin. Dalí has signed boldly, in pencil. The work bears the edition number XLI/LXXV (41/75), lower left, also in pencil.
Anti-Umbrella with Atomized Liquids is the sole work in Dalí's Imaginations and Objects of the Future suite which contains two collages, making it especially rich with deep coloration.
In text on the original, oversized Title sleeve, which served as a chemise for the artwork and which will accompany the framed work, are the artist’s own words describing his inventive Anti-Umbrella with Atomized Liquids:
“For beaches, like St. Tropez. This is a mechanism to help people remain healthy and beautiful. There are atomizers containing a very fine fluid concealed in the crown of the umbrella, and a button in the handle which activates them. So, a girl in a bikini, or without one, opens her umbrella which protects her from the sun and at the same time, by pushing a button, she is dripping with an atomized liquid like rain of dew to tan and to nourish the skin with substances, for a triumphant dermatology.”
Dalí’s magnificent Anti-Umbrella with Atomized Liquids predicts a technology that would at once provide UV-protection to sunbathers, while tanning and nourishing the skin; fantastically, with “atomized liquids” concealed in an umbrella, it imagines a sort of James Bond meets St. Tropez, or Bond Girl on the beach. The Dallas Museum of Art interpreted this work as how Dalí “envisioned a beach umbrella that not only protects one from the sun’s rays but also emits an atomized liquid that provides an artificial tan, [it] is not unlike the bottled tanning solutions used today. It is also a precursor to the misting machines that are used to cool an outdoor porch or deck in the heat.”
The imagery is classic Dalí, lyrical yet surreal. A colorful, almost pointillistic umbrella is topped with a flower. The magical “atomized liquids” rain down protecting the bikini-clad sunbather, with flowing golden hair; while a second deeply colored umbrella, applied as collage, abuts the sunbather. Also applied as collage is a self-portrait of the artist, replete with iconic Dalí-esque detail. Deep blue waves of the sea stretch across the width of the composition; a red sailboat floats on the waves.
The vibrant, colored portion of the composition is offset and balanced with linear renderings accomplished with a draughtman’s precision, emanating from beneath the collage umbrella, echoing the shape and form of the spindly ribs of an umbrella.
One of the hidden treasures in the work are the written words by Dalí, interspersed among the linear drawings, written backwards (as in the projecting, reversing mirrors of a camera). One may read the words in forward direction by holding the artwork to a mirror.
Two of the closeups presented in the auction images show the reverse-writing portion of the artwork as its mirror image, for reading. The images also include a photograph of gallerist Robert Chase seated with Dalí in front of several of the original artworks from which Imaginations & Objects of the Future was created.
Stored flat since 1975, the artwork has now been framed for the first time (hinged with easily removable tape) in an elegant and substantial frame measuring 39-1/2” in height x 27” width, with custom archival matting in ivory. On the reverse side of the frame is a special full-sized pocket, created to hold the original Title chemise which accompanies the artwork.
Catalogued in Dalí expert Albert Field's authoritative Official Catalog of The Graphic Works of Salvador Dalí, Reference 75-11 H, page 104, Anti-Umbrella with Atomized Liquids was created by Desjobert (lithograph), Rigal (engraving); and published by Merrill Chase, Chicago / Alan Rich, New York.
Anti-Umbrella with Atomized Liquids comes accompanied by its original protective Title chemise, and 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".