Dali gala madonna exploding

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    • Exploding Madonna 1979 HS

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    Salvador Dali

    Limited Edition Print : Mixed Media Lithograph
    Size : 30x23 in  |  76x58 cm
    Framed : 36x27 in  |  91x69 cm
    Edition : From the Edition of 450

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    • 🔥1979 Framed Limited Edition Hand Signed Mixed Media Lithograph - Blue Chip - Inquire $2,800

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    Year1979

    Hand SignedLower Right in Pencil 

    Condition Excellent 

    Framed with GlassMetal Frame w/ Orange Mat 

    Purchased fromPublisher 1979 

    Provenance / HistoryPurchased directly from the publisher, Martin Lawrence, in Van Nuys California in 1979. Original owner. 

    Certificate of AuthenticityMartin Lawrence Limited Editions 

    Additional InformationMotivated 

    LID174561

    Salvador Dali - Spain

    Art Brokerage: Park West Artist: Salvador Dali Spanish Artist: Salvador Dalí was a renowned Spanish Surrealist artist known for his enigmatic paintings of dreamscapes and religious themes. The Persistence of Memory (1931), arguably his best known work, visually manifests the strangeness of time by depicting clocks melting in an idyllic landscape. "One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams," he once reflected. Born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech on May 11, 1904 in Figueres, Spain, he displayed a great aptitude for the visual arts as a teenager. Three years after his first exhibition at the age of 14, he enrolled at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. At school, he emulated many contemporary styles but also the works of Johannes Vermeer and Diego Velázquez. During his visits to Paris in the late 1920s, he was introduced to the Surrealist movement by René Magritte and Joan Miró. Though the concept of Surrealism was new to him, Dalí was already well versed in the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. Dabbling in various projects throughout

    Lapis-Lazuli Corpuscular Assumption, 1952 by Salvador Dali

    Lapis-lazuli Corpuscular Assumption repeats several of the images seen in Raphaelesque Head Exploding (1951). The outline of the Pantheon can be seen, the top of which acts as a halo to Gala's head. Like the Madonna, Gala is exploding, her body delineated by the rhinoceros horns that swirl about the painting.

    Above an altar is the figure of the crucified Christ. The model for Christ was a boy from Cadaques called Juan whom the Dalis were very close to, treating him like an adopted son. The boy's body forms a triangle, a shape repeated by Gala's arms and head above. Dali had a glass floor put in his studio so that he could look up or down on his models in order to recreate this perspective.

    Dali saw this painting as an interpretation of the philosopher Nietzsche's idea of natural strength, although here we have Gala as a "superwoman," ascending to heaven through her own innate force. In a later explanation of the work, Dali wrote that Gala was rising to heaven with the aid of "anti-matter Angels." The painting can be interpreted as Gala's body either disintegrating or integrating.

    A far more straightforward link with contemporary avant-garde art can be discerned in Lapis-lazuli Corpuscular Assumption, which is obviously influence by the vigorous, expressive brushstrokes of American Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock

    Raphaelesque Head Exploding, 1951 by Salvador Dali

    Following the atomic explosion over Hiroshima in 1945, Dali painted a number of fragmented heads and figures. Some of the shapes that form the head in this painting are solid and phallic-shaped - inspired by rhinoceros horns. The upper area of the painting, with the halo and brown clouds, resembles photographs of atomic explosions. The female face, with its tender expression and thin halo, is recognizable as the face of Madonna by Raphael. Dali was a great admirer of Renaissance Masters - Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael - to be specific. The skull section in this work is based upon the inside of the dome of the Pantheon building in Rome.

    Dali has fragmented the head to show how the sense of order from the past, illustrated by the balance and reason of a classical icon, has been shattered by the advent of nuclear weapons. The motif of the shattered head was a common one amongst artists in the post-war years. This reflects the emotional turmoil of a period when nuclear war seemed like a reality, following the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this context, the delicate halo of the Madonna now suggests a nuclear mushroom cloud and her expression, with eyes downcast in prayer, seems particularly appropriate.

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