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SALVADOR DALÍ
(1904‒1989)
Hommage a Newton ‒ sans bras (Homage to Newton ‒
without arms)
Inscribed ‘Dali’ and ‘EA’ and stamped with the foundry
mark ‘C. Valsuani cire perdue’ (on the back of the base)
1968
Bronze
Height: 11 in (27.9 cm)
Width: 3.5 in (8.9 cm)
Depth: 3.5 in (8.9 cm)
$ 25,000 ‒ 35,000
Rs 18,50,000 ‒ 25,90,000
Artist’s proof from a limited edition of eight
PROVENANCE
Saffronart, 15‒16 February 2012, lot 12
PUBLISHING
Robert and Nicolas Descharnes,
Dali: Le dur et le mou, Sortilege
et magie des formes: Sculptures et objects
, Azay‒le‒Rideau: Eccart,
2004, p. 123 (ilustrated, another cast)
Surrealism was a literary and visual art movement centred in Paris, which flourished in Europe between the two world wars. It
was formalised in 1924 when the French poet and critic André Breton published
The Surrealist Manifesto
. The goal was to create
a way of thinking which united subconscious thought with the conscious experience, to create “an absolute reality, a surreality.”
Salvador Dalí (1904‒1989), undoubtedly the most famous Surrealist artist, used Freudian symbols and dream imagery to create
erotically charged, hallucinatory images that shocked the world. Dalí was a skilled draftsman, and his complex, vibrant, drawings
and illustrations were often studies for larger works.
Although known predominantly as a painter, Dalí also worked in other media such as photography, film, poetry, and sculpture
and three‒dimensional works. His first Surrealist sculptural objects have been traced back to the 1930s, if not before; in 1931, Dalí
published a text titled “Objets surréalistes,” classifying these objects into six categories.
Hommage à Newton
was first cast in 1968 under the artist’s supervision in the famous Valsuani foundry in Paris. The bronze
sculpture is Dalí’s tribute to the renowned scientist Sir Isaac Newton, discoverer of gravity. In the preface of her book
Newton:
The Making of Genius
, historian Patricia Fara writes, “Salvador Dalí’s startling surrealist sculpture of Isaac Newton is an elegant
abstract figure… Despite its rippling musculature, this polished bronze humanoid has a hollow body and a disturbingly empty
oval instead of a face. By obliterating Newton’s personality, Dalí implicitly invites us to impose our own interpretations.” (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2002, p. xv)
Hommage
would later be cast in an edition of 350 in the 1980s, as well as a monumental rendition created for the Plaza Dalí in
Madrid.
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