Salvador Dalí, NEWTON DE GALA, bronze, height: 388cm., 152 1/2 in.

Robert Descharnes & Gilles Néret, Salvador Dalí. The Paintings 1946-1989, Cologne, 1994, vol. II, no. 1433, illustration in colour  of another cast pp. 644 & 645; no. 1435, illustration in colour of the cast on the Plaza Dalí, Madrid, p. 645
Robert & Nicolas Descharnes, Dalí, The Hard and the Soft, Spells for the Magic Form, Sculptures and Objects, Paris, 2004, nos. 308-310, illustrations of another cast pp. 124 & 125; nos. 297-300, 303, 304, 305 & 307, illustrations of casts from other editions, pp. 122-24

This monumental bronze relates to an important painting that Dalí completed in 1932 entitled Fosfène de Laporte, in which the figure of Newton appears in the lower half of the canvas. The ideas for many of Dalí's sculptures derived from his paintings, and this work clearly demonstrates the powerful effect of translating  the original two-dimensional image into three dimensional form. In 1969, Dalí executed the first plaster cast of this figure entitled Hommage à Newton. A larger version, Newton de Gala, was later cast in 1985 in bronze by the Capa foundry in Madrid in an edition of 8, plus four artist's proofs. This edition, of which the present work is number III/IV/E.A., was created under the direction of the artist for the sculptural ensemble entitled Dolmen de Dalí in the Plaza Salvador Dalí in Madrid, and demonstrates the artist's continued fascination with this figure nearly fifty years after he first conceptualised it in oil. Including the Dolmen de Dalí in Madrid, other examples of this monumental sculpture can be found in the collection of the Dalí Museum in Figueras and on display at the UOB Plaza in Singapore.

The present sculpture is a tribute to Sir Isaac Newton, who formulated the law of gravity after his legendary mishap with a falling apple. Here, Dalí presents Newton as a symbolic figure, identifiable only by his plumb line rather than by any physiological characteristics. F. Passoni, R. Morse and A. Field offer the following interpretation of this work: 'The plumb line represents the fall of the apple, but is transformed by Dalí from the random, unpredictable trajectory of a ripe (soft) apple into the rigid, perfectly straight and immutable (hard) line of attraction that requires it to be precisely perpendicular to the earth's surface and point towards the centre. The apple itself has become a sphere of metal. It has lost both its impermanence and its capacity for regeneration and has become a uniform solid that can neither be changed nor cause a change...the artist shows Newton as a mere label, devoid of any human context. He achieves this by introducing in the centre of the figure two holes, one in the head and one in the torso, removing all organs and leaving only the metal shell as a symbol. Newton the man is gone, while Newton's law is demonstrated to us voicelessly and permanently' (F. Passoni, R. Morse & A. Field, Dali nella terza dimensione, Venice, 1987, p. 45).