The Galerie Montmartre
Open Monday to Sunday, from 9:30am to 6:30pm
Price on request
Dalí honors Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the English mathematician, who discovered the law of gravity when an apple fell on his head. In this sculpture, based on the small image illustrated in the painting Phosphene of Laporte (1932), Dalí pierced the figure with two holes: one which portrays the absence of Newton’s vital organs, whilst the empty head suggests open mindedness. Dalí implies that Newton has become a mere name in science, completely stripped of his personal identity and individuality.
Dalí was obsessed with the concept of hard and soft, here he plays with inverting the anatomy, showing the bones protruding from the body. As Dalí recounts in his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí: “The hip bones, which absolutely must be very prominent- pointed, so that one knows that they are there”.
In 1986 the King of Spain dedicated a large plaza in Madrid to Dalí and the artist created a monument of this image for its center, that is almost five meters high. The sculpture still stands there today.
Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Doménech was born in 1904 in Figueras, Spain. A painter, sculptor, and author, he is considered one of the most distinctive representatives of surrealism and icons of the 20th century.
Influenced by Impressionism, he began his artistic training at the academy in Madrid. On the advice of Miro, he then left for Paris, where he joined the Surrealist group. There he met his future wife, Gala, his “surrealist muse” and the inspiration for his life and work.
Dalí found his unique style around 1929 when he invented the paranoiac-critical method. His works revolve around the themes of dreams, sexuality, his wife Gala, and religion.
The sculptures of Salvador Dalí
In the 1930s, Dalí began experimenting with three-dimensional art and sculpture. His desire was to translate the fetishes and obsessions of his unconscious into volume and solid matter. He thus recreated the major themes of his pictorial work in the form of sculptures. These sculptures were made using the lost wax technique, a process that allows for perfect precision in bronze modeling.
They represent a significant aspect of Dalí’s artistic creation and provide a synthesis of his interest in form. These bronze sculptures are effectively surrealism in the third dimension.
Galerie Montmartre since 2016, with a permanent representation in France and across international art fairs. The gallery handles international, door-to-door delivery with insurance.
Open Monday to Sunday, from 9:30am to 6:30pm