SALVADOR DALÍ | Nietzschéens vers le Haut!

Goldschmit Collection, Brussels
Félix Labisse, France (acquired before 1980)
Galerie des Modernes, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2015

Brussels, Casino communal de Knokke Le Zoute, Salvador Dalí, 1956, no. 83, illustrated in the catalogue & on the cover
Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Dali: Exposition Dali: avec la collection de Edward F.W. James, 1970-71, no. 144, illustrated in the catalogue
Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Salvador Dalí: Rétrospective 1920-1980, 1980, no. 206, illustrated in the catalogue
London, The Tate Gallery, Salvador Dalí, 1980, no. 140

Executed on cream card, not laid down and hinged to the mount in all four corners by an adhesive. There is very light staining to the edges of the card due to a previous mount. There is some very light craquelure to the thicker areas of ink in places. There is a minor spot of paper skimming in the lower right quadrant of the card. This work is in overall very good condition.
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Salvador Dalí executed the present drawing for the cover of the catalogue for his retrospective exhibition organised in Belgium in 1956 by his friend and fellow painter Felix Labisse, who later acquired the work. Nietzschéens vers le Haut! is a tribute to one of the greatest philosopher's of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche, whose body of work was a fruitful source of inspiration for Dalí. In Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, he advocates 'symbolical dream-pictures' which according to the philosopher facilitate the artist's oneness with the primal source of the cosmos.

This work is recorded in the Robert and Nicolas Descharnes Archives under the number D0313_1956.