Lot 308
  • 308

Salvador Dalí

Estimate
400,000 - 600,000 USD
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Description

  • Salvador Dalí
  • Nature morte. Invitació a la son (Invitation à dormir), Portrait de Federico García Lorca
  • Signed Salvador Dalí and dated 1926 (lower right)
  • Oil on canvas
  • 39 by 39 in.
  • 99.1 by 99.1 cm

Provenance

Private Collection, Barcelona
Private Collection, Japan (acquired by circa 1969)
Thence by descent

Exhibited

Barcelona, Salon Gaspar, 1926, no. 28
Barcelona, Galerie Dalmau, Exposició S. Dalí, 1926-27, no. 17
Okayama, Tenma-ya Gallery, Centenarian of Western Modern Art, 1969

Literature

Antonina Rodrigo, Lorca, Dalí: una amistad traicionada, Barcelona, 1981, p. 81
Rafael Santos Torroella, La miel es más dulce que la sangre: las épocas lorquiana y freudiana de Salvador Dalí, Barcelona, 1984, p. 112
Karin von Maur, Salvador Dalí, 1904-1989, Stuttgart, 1989, no. 43, illustrated p. 51
Daniel Giralt-Miracle, Avantguardes a Catalunya, Barcelona, 1992, p. 306
Fèlix Fanés & Aguer Montserrat, Dalí. Arquitectura, Barcelona, 1996, p. 195
Fèlix Fanés, Salvador Dalí: La construcción de la imagen, 1925-1930, Madrid, 1999, p. 59
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Huellas dalinianas, Madrid, 2004, p. 38
Fèlix Fanés, La Pintura y sus sombras: cuatro estudios sobre Salvador Dalí, Teruel, 2004, p. 20

Condition

It appears that this painting has not been restored since it was acquired by Japanese interest in the 1960s. Prior to that, it had been with Spanish galleries in the trade in Barcelona, who were presumably in close contact with the artist himself. The paint layer seems to have never been cleaned or varnished. The painting is very fresh and original feeling, with a nice quality to the paint layer. The very thin original canvas has deteriorated around the edges, prompting the present lining, which appears to have been applied in the 1960s prior to the work having been sent to Japan. One of the reasons for the lining may have been the deterioration of the tacking edges, but it does seem that there are some structural damages that have occurred to the work. In the upper right corner of the pale grey fence, a fairly complex tear, which runs roughly 12 inches horizontally, appears to have been restored. A second structural damage in the center of the right side in the ochre shape, entering the red section on the right edge, has also been restored. There also seems to be a third structural damage in the center of the left side, which is in the form of a strip extending from the extreme left edge into the red and ochre colors of the work in the center of the left edge. Aside from these isolated areas of unevenness, there do not appear to be any other obvious areas that have been repainted, although there seems to be an additional restoration on the bottom edge on the center right. However, under ultraviolet light, no restorations are visible whatsoever. Although there have clearly been isolated damages to the painting and restoration attending these, none of this work is visible under ultraviolet light. Normally this phenomenon would be attributed to a screening varnish designed to mislead the viewer. However, in this case there does not appear to be such a varnish. Therefore, this does open up the possibility that the artist himself, shortly after he painted this work, or at least a restorer active at the time the work was painted, repaired these damages. Regardless of whether Dali was the restorer, the restoration can be significantly improved and corrected in a few areas, but cleaning is certainly not recommended. The above condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca arrived at the Residencia de Estudiantes, the seat of avant-gardism in Madrid from 1910 to 1936, in the early 1920s. Dalí's education was dotted with expulsions and censure from the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, and he often steered clear of the literary cadre over which García Lorca reigned. Still, the two found in each other (and in their compatriot Luis Buñuel) sharp intellectual companionship and rivalry.

Unsurprisingly, the combination of Dalí's precocity and high self-regard produced a seemingly limitless bravado. He had few expectations of his peers, and saw his classmates (and professors) as willing recipients of his genius with little to give in return. It is remarkable, then, that Dalí was dumbstruck, perhaps even intimidated, by García Lorca's intellectual acrobatics at the after-hours literary tables of Madrid. Of these late evenings when García Lorca held court, Dalí recalled: "This was the culminating moment of [Lorca's] irresistible personal influence—and the only moment in my life when I thought I glimpsed the torture that jealousy can be" (Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, New York, 1942, p. 203).

The present work's title and slumbering subject may refer to an unsettlingly prophetic presentation that García Lorca rehearsed while at home in the Residencia. According to Dalí, García Lorca staged elaborately descriptive performances of his own death. They featured a rigorously ghoulish enactment of bodily decomposition (five days long, by his estimation), a sobering appraisal of his casket's décor, and an extensive recital of the trappings of his funerary procession through Granada. The drama unfolded with García Lorca in bed and his compatriots gathered at his side. At its conclusion, García Lorca unceremoniously shattered the illusion by leaping up, laughing, and brusquely ushering his friends out the door. After this, he slept.

Invitació a la son combines the Surrealist preoccupation with oneiric, symbol-riddled personal psychologies with a spatial sensibility developed by Giorgio de Chirico. Beyond its clear formal and art historical merits, the present work is an important document of an ephemeral friendship—Dalí and García Lorca were closest between 1925 and 1928, and Lorca was assassinated at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936—that provides rare candid access to the tenderness and vulnerability behind the sometimes impenetrably bizarre façade of the Surrealist avant-garde.  In his 1942 autobiography, Dalí wrote, "...The personality of García Lorca produced an immense impression on me. The poetic phenomenon in its entirety and 'in the raw' presented itself before me suddenly in flesh and bone, confused, blood-red, viscous and sublime, quivering with a thousand fires of darkness and of subterranean biology like all matter endowed with originality in its own form" (ibid., p. 176).

Fig. 1 A reclining García Lorca. Photograph taken by Dalí's sister Ana Maria in 1925.

Fig. 2 Dalí, García Lorca and Pepin Bello at the Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid in 1923.