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Eléphant Spatial
Certificat d'authenticité avec l'oeuvre
Price on request
The image of an elephant carrying an obelisk is portrayed in one of Dalí’s best-known paintings The Temptation of St Anthony (1946). Four elephants led by a horse in a desert landscape, carry symbolic objects which represent various temptations. The obelisk, symbol of knowledge and power, is Dalí’s homage to Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculpture in Rome.
Dalí’s elephants have exaggeratedly long legs which raise them up towards the sky. These thin, multi-jointed legs juxtapose with the heavy body of the elephant. The obelisk alludes to a tiring burden, yet the artist distorts reality making it weightless, an illusion of it almost floating above the saddle. The combination of these contradictory elements create a sense of disarray and metaphysical imbalance that can only exist in a dream-like world.
The image of the elongated legs in addition to the tall pointed obelisk, alludes to man’s pursuit of ‘reaching higher’. The legs of the elephant originally had claw-like feet during the sculpture’s creation. Doubtful of this element, Beniamino Levi President of the Dalí Universe, approached Dalí to modify it. After initial resistance and with Gala’s support, the feet changed to horses hooves.
About the artwork
| Technique | bronze, cire perdue |
| Materials | Bronze |
| Dimensions | 94 cm |
| Condition | excellent |
| Signature | gravée sur la base |
| Certificate | Certificate of authenticity avec l'oeuvre |
| Foundry | Perseo (CH) |
| Edition Information | numéroté sur 350 + 35 E.A. |
| Creation Information | conception en 1980 ; première fonte en 1980 |
| Reference | R. N. Descharnes Salvador Dalí Sculptures Objects. Eccart. Ref. 631, page 244. |
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SALVADOR DALí
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.