| The Elephants | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Salvador Dalí |
| Year | 1948 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Movement | Surrealism |
| Dimensions | 49 cm× 60 cm(19 in× 24 in) |
| Location | Private collection |
The Elephants (Catalan : Els Elefants) is a 1948 painting by the Catalan surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. [1]
The elephant is a recurring theme in the works of Dalí, first appearing in his 1944 work Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening , and also in The Temptation of Saint Anthony and Swans Reflecting Elephants . The Elephants differs from the other paintings in that the animals are the primary focus of the work, with a barren graduated background and lack of other content, where most of Dalí's paintings contain much detail and points of interest (for example Swans Reflecting Elephants which is somewhat better known within Dalí's repertoire than The Elephants [2] ). The stork-legged elephant is one of the best-known icons of Dalí's work. Other examples are The space elephant (made of gold and gemstones) that Salvador Dalí designed in 1961 [3] and the homonymous sculpture created in 1980. [4]
There are various cultural depictions of elephants, where they are often viewed as symbols of strength, dominance and power due to their bulk and weight. [5] Dalí contrasts these typical associations by giving the elephants long, spindly, almost arachnid-like legs, once described as "multijointed, almost invisible legs of desire". [6] Dalí enhances the appearance of strength and weight by depicting the elephants carrying massive obelisks on their backs, however, on close inspection it can be seen that these weights are floating. The obelisks on the backs of the elephants are believed to be inspired by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture base in Rome of an elephant carrying an ancient obelisk, [7] and was mentioned in several communications of the artist, so can be considered a reliable claim. [2]
The Elephants is a good example of a surrealist work, creating a sense of phantom reality. "The elephant is a distortion in space", one critic[ who? ] explains, "its spindly legs contrasting the idea of weightlessness with structure"; [6] "contrasting weight and space". [2]
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol, known as Salvador Dalí, was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work.
The Dalí Theatre and Museum is a museum dedicated to the artist Salvador Dalí in his home town of Figueres, in Catalonia, Spain. Salvador Dalí lived there from 1984 to 1989, and is buried in a crypt below the stage. The museum received 1,368,755 visitors in 2016.
The Persistence of Memory is a 1931 painting by artist Salvador Dalí and one of the most recognizable works of Surrealism. First shown at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932, since 1934 the painting has been in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, which received it from an anonymous donor. It is widely recognized and frequently referred to in popular culture, and sometimes referred to by more descriptive titles, such as "The Melting Clocks", "The Soft Watches" or "The Melting Watches".
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening is a surrealist painting by Salvador Dalí, from 1944. A shorter alternate title for the painting is Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee. The woman in the painting, dreaming, is believed to represent his wife, Gala, a regular presence in his work. The painting is currently in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, in Madrid.
The Castle of Púbol or Gala Dalí Castle House-Museum, located in Púbol in the comarca of Baix Empordà, Girona, Catalonia, Spain, is a medieval building where the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí's enormous creative efforts were focused on a single person, his wife Gala, with the aim of providing her with a unique sanctuary and resting place. Gala is buried at the castle. Together with the Salvador Dalí House Museum in Portlligat and the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres, they form the Empordà Dalinian triangle.
The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used as a Table is a small Surrealist oil painting by Salvador Dalí. Its full title is The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used as a Table . It makes reference to The Art of Painting by Johannes Vermeer, a famous seventeenth-century work in which a painter, thought to be a self-portrait of Vermeer, is depicted with his back to the viewer, in distinctive costume. It is one of a number of paintings expressive of Dalí's enormous admiration for Vermeer.
Swans Reflecting Elephants is an oil painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí, from 1937. It is held in a private collection.
The Dalí Paris is a museum exhibition in France devoted to Salvador Dalí consisting mainly of sculptures and engravings. The museum, near the Place du Tertre in the Montmartre district of Paris, was inaugurated in 1991, and it has around 300 original artworks. The collection features mainly three-dimensional sculptures of Dalí's best known surrealistic paintings.
Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) is a 1954 oil-on-canvas painting by Salvador Dalí. A nontraditional, surrealist portrayal of the Crucifixion, it depicts Christ on a polyhedron net of a tesseract (hypercube). It is one of his best-known paintings from the later period of his career.
Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach is an oil painting by the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, from 1938. It is part of the Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, in Hartford, Connecticut.
The Salvador Dalí House Museum is an house museum in Portlligat, Cadaqués, Catalonia, Spain, where Spanish painter Salvador Dalí lived and worked, from 1930 to 1982. After the death of his wife, Gala Dalí, in 1982, he took up residence at Púbol Castle. The artist's former house started to be adapted to become a museum since 1994 and was officially inaugurated, in 1997. It is owned and managed by the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation. It has been a Site of Cultural Interest since 1997.
The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation is a private cultural institution founded by the painter Salvador Dalí with the mission of promoting his artistic, cultural and intellectual œuvre. It is also named after his wife, Gala Dalí. Although the Foundation manages the assets, trademark rights, intellectual property and image of the painter, it is not its owner, since Dalí bequeathed all of his assets to the Spanish State in his last will.
La Gare de Perpignan is a c. 1965 large-scale oil on canvas painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí, on display in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.
Apparatus and Hand is a 1927 oil painting by Salvador Dalí. The painting currently resides at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. This work is on loan from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. A Reynolds Morse.
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936) is a painting by the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. Dalí created the piece to represent the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, having painted it only six months before the conflict began. He subsequently claimed that he was aware the war was going to occur long before it began, and cited his work as evidence of "the prophetic power of his subconscious mind." However, some have speculated that Dalí may have changed the name of the painting after the war to emphasize his prophetic assertions, although it is not entirely certain.
Morohashi Museum of Modern Art is an art museum that opened in Kitashiobara, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, in 1999. It is situated within Bandai-Asahi National Park, near Goshiki-numa and with views of Mount Bandai. The permanent collection includes over three hundred forty pieces by Salvador Dalí, which makes it the third largest Dalí Museum in the world and the sole Dalí Museum in Asia. It also owns works by other painters, like Sisley, Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse and Picasso.
New possibilities opened up by the concept of four-dimensional space helped inspire many modern artists in the first half of the twentieth century. Early Cubists, Surrealists, Futurists, and abstract artists took ideas from higher-dimensional mathematics and used them to radically advance their work.
The Temptation of St. Anthony is a painting by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. Painted in 1946, it is a precursor to the body of Dalí's work commonly known as the "classical period" or the "Dalí Renaissance".
Nieuw Amsterdam is a 1974 object/sculpture by Salvador Dalí done after an 1899 bronze statue bust of Chief White Eagle by the American sculptor and artist Charles Schreyvogel. It was then transformed by the Spanish-Catalan surrealist via his Paranoiac-critical method to include a painting executed upon the face of the bust of various doings in the Dutch West India Company colony of Nieuw Amsterdam.
A Chemist Lifting with Extreme Precaution the Cuticle of a Grand Piano is a 1936 oil painting by artist Salvador Dalí. The painting is an example of Dalí's distinctive, avant-garde brand of surrealism as well as a curious example of Dalí's mysterious relationship with Judaism.