Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) (after) - "The Persistence of Memory, 1931 " - (60x80cm)

- Salvador Dalí (after). Authorized offset on heavyweight smooth satin paper (300gsm approx).

Size: 60 x 80 cm.

- Copyright Gala - Salvador Dalí Foundation by SIAE.

- Condition: excellent. Never framed, never exposed.

- Salvador Dalí, born on May 11, 1904, in Figueras, Spain, was a Spanish Surrealist painter and printmaker, known for his explorations of subconscious imagery. He studied art in Madrid and Barcelona, displaying unusual technical skill as a painter. His mature artistic style developed in the late 1920s after discovering Sigmund Freud’s writings on the erotic significance of subconscious imagery and affiliating with the Paris Surrealists.

Dalí’s painting style matured rapidly from 1929 to 1937, producing paintings that made him the world’s best-known Surrealist artist.

Dalí's most famous work, 'The Persistence of Memory' (1931), is one of the most recognizable works of Surrealism. This work introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch, epitomizing Dalí's theory of 'softness' and 'hardness'. The painting depicts a dreamlike world where ordinary objects are juxtaposed, deformed, or otherwise transformed in a bizarre and irrational manner. The limp melting watches rest in an eerily calm landscape, often referred to as 'Melting Clocks', 'The Soft Watches', or 'The Melting Watches'.

The piece is a subjective vision of time and its implications, both in the artwork itself and in memories. It’s also a tribute to the inner time of the unconscious, which has its own way of telling time and escapes superficial rationality. The well-known surrealist piece is seen as an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order. However, Dalí stated that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting in the sun.

In the middle of the composition, it’s possible to recognize a human figure, a strange “monster” that Dalí used in several contemporary pieces to represent himself. The creature seems to be based on a figure from the Paradise section of Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” which Dalí had studied. The iconography may refer to a dream that Dalí himself had experienced, and the clocks may symbolize the passing of time as one experiences it in sleep or the persistence of time in the eyes of the dreamer.

In terms of the value of his works, Dalí’s paintings continue to perform well at auction. According to Mei Moses of the famous auction house, the average compound annual return for Salvador Dalí resold at auction between 2003 and 2017 was 7.3%. A remarkable 88.2% of 153 such works increased in value.

Some artists of similar importance, Basquiat, Picasso, Hockney, Lichtenstein, Miró, Banksy, Brainwash, Delaunay, Nara, Soulages, Lagasse, Ramos, Rothko, Lautrec, Klimt, Matisse, Hirst, Chagall, Hockney, Haring, Indiana, Mondrian, Groening, Coa, Warhol, Richter, Monroe, Kusama, Murakami, Testa, Villemot, Oldenburg, Hopper, Ripollès, Wesselmann, Magritte, Jenk, Orlinski, Wille, Rizzi, among others.