Artist: Salvador Dalí
Title: Biological Garden (from Dalí's Imaginations & Objects of the Future portfolio)
Year created: 1975
Medium: Original Etching and Lithograph, with Pochoir Hand-Coloring and Collage, on Japon Paper
Edition: XLI/LXXV (41/75) Hand-Signed & Numbered Limited Edition, from the rare Roman Numeral Limited Edition in English on Japon Paper
Height (inches): 41-3/4
Width (inches): 29-5/8
Signed by the artist
Signed Area: front
Description of piece:
Celebrate summer all year long with this joyous and vibrant original Dalí artwork, which combines etching, lithograph, and hand-applied color and collage!
Beautifully composed, and filled with bright, clear color, this surrealist masterpiece from Salvador Dalí, Biological Garden, is from Dalí’s significant Imaginations and Objects of the Future portfolio.
In the early 1970s gallerist Robert Chase proposed to Salvador Dalí the concept of Dalí picturing himself as the 20th century Leonardo da Vinci, giving to the world what he imagined the future would hold.
Knowing that Dalí greatly admired da Vinci as both a thinker and a creative genius was still not adequate preparation for Dalí’s reaction to the concept. Dalí reportedly rolled his eyes as indication of an extraordinary epiphany, and (the artist speaking in an outrageously exaggerated French-Catalan accent) Dalí loudly exclaimed, "Fantastique! Bravo! Dal-i create the fu-ture!"
And thus Dalí created his imaginatively creative and predictively futuristic “Imaginations and Objects of the Future”— a suite of ten drypoint etchings combined with lithography, added color by the method of pochoir, and collage. Each extravagantly surrealist, the suite included artworks predicting self-driving cars and smart-phones, along with inventions that could only have come from the extraordinary imagination of the artist— all expressed through the fantastical lens of Dalí, as the modern da Vinci.
This artwork is composed of original etching, lithograph, color hand-applied by pochoir method, and collage; especially rare within the Imaginations and Objects of the Future suite, Biological Garden contains two distinct areas of collage applications.
Biological Garden is hand-signed by Dalí, lower right, in an large signature directly within the image area and spanning into the work’s lower right margin. Dalí has signed boldly, in pencil. The work bears the edition number XLI/LXXV (41/75), lower left margin, also in pencil.
In text on the original, oversized Title sleeve, which served as a chemise for the artwork and which will accompany the framed work, are the artist’s own words describing his inventive Biological Garden:
“This garden would float triumphantly in space. It would be similar to a balloon but not spherical. More flat, like an inflatable filet of sole. It would be covered with a biological surface, so the garden would receive and be nourished by the sun’s rays, the same way as the plants and flowers within it. The garden would be capable of various tensions so it could be navigated in space, steered remotely by radiation or radio waves.”
Dalí’s magnificent Biological Garden presciently foresaw futuristic — and contemporary — experiments in ‘terraforming’; the creation of ‘biospheres’; and, perhaps most perfectly, science fiction visions of floating oases in space, such as that depicted in the iconic 2013 film Elysium.
Here, in Dalí’s Biological Garden, we encounter components of an archetypal Dalínean landscapes, combining the minimalism of Dalí’s geographical details with richly colored and detailed lyrical renderings of plants, flowers, figures: at the work’s midpoint is the minimalistic blue line of an ocean horizon, with curvaceous blue land elements sharing the horizon point. Within the ocean, blue water gently waves and ripples.
The sky is given over to bursts of colorful green foliage and bright flowers in orange, golden yellow and red. Roses are rendered both in colorful abstract and highly defined etching. In the center of the composition, a large dragonfly — with hand-applied collage wings — shares the sky with flowering plants. Flying birds and iconic Dalínean figures, many with hands raised in joyful exclamation, populate the artwork.
The vibrant, colored portions of the composition are offset and balanced with linear renderings ranging from abstract, to realistic, and to the paradoxical. Dalí’s judicious use of bold color, juxtaposed with his linear renderings and perfectly placed collage elements, creates a balance and visual flow to this masterful and uplifting artwork. The special Japon paper used for this rare edition adds an added element of depth and delicateness, and instills an almost luminescent quality to the artwork.
Stored flat since 1975, the artwork has now been framed for the first time (hinged with easily removable tape) in a substantial frame of deep black/ebony-toned wood, with visible wood grain, gentle wood distressing, and carved detailing. Custom archival matting in ivory completes the elegant presentation, with framed size measuring 41-3/4” in height x 29-5/8” width. On the reverse side of the frame is a special full-sized pocket, created to hold the original Title chemise which accompanies the artwork.
Catalogued in Dalí expert Albert Field's authoritative Official Catalog of The Graphic Works of Salvador Dalí, Reference 75-11 J, page 104, Biological Garden was created by Desjobert (lithograph), Rigal (engraving); and published by Merrill Chase, Chicago / Alan Rich, New York. The penultimate image presented in the auction images shows gallerist Robert Chase seated with Dalí in front of some of the original artworks from which the Imaginations and Objects of the Future portfolio was created.
Biological Garden comes accompanied by its original protective Title chemise, and a Certificate of Authenticity.
Artist bio:
Salvador Dalí, born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, (1904-1989) was a prominent artist born in Figueres, Spain, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, sixteen miles from the French border, in Catalonia. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media, and he is best known for his surrealist work, including his most well-known painting, The Persistence of Memory. Highly imaginative, Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to an ancestry of descent from the medieval Moors. His individualistic nature and resistance to conformity made waves, including among his colleagues. In 1934, when Dalí was subjected to a "trial", in which he was formally expelled from the Surrealist group, Dalí retorted, "le Surrealisme c'est moi": "I myself am surrealism".
