Artist: Salvador Dalí
Title: Enigma of the Rose (from the Visions Surrealiste Portfolio
)
Year created: 1976
Medium: Lithograph on Arches Paper, from an Original Painting
Edition: Limited Edition E.A. (Epreuve d'Artiste / Artist's Proof). One of fifty Epreuve d'Artiste’s on Arches Paper
Height (inches): 35
Width (inches): 26-5/8
Signed by the artist
Signed Area: front
This piece is framed.
Includes a certificate of authenticity.
Description of piece:
This rare original lithograph, Enigma of the Rose, by Salvador Dalí is hand-signed and inscribed EA ("Epreuve d’Artiste" - Artist's Proof), from the limited edition of only 150 numbered prints, with additional 50 EA impressions, on Arches paper.
Deeply hued with gemlike color, replete with both bold figures and fine nuance, Enigma of the Rose is a classic and iconic Dalí surrealist work.
In its center, a vibrant green tree hovers, though severed from its trunk. Within a keyhole-like portal in the tree is a figure, with a face of wood and forested hair, a key (and its blue shadow) dangling from his mouth. Foliage grows from a cloaked figure to the left; while to the right the eponymous enigmatic rose grows large and brightly red from the Dalíesque landscape.
Lines extend across the expanse, defining the terrain, towards the mountainous horizon. Within that expanse, a single female figure skips rope, her shadow long and blue on the land.
The designation “E.A.” is written in pencil in the lower left margin, and the artwork bears Dalí's distinctive signature, prominently, boldly hand-signed in pencil within the lower right image area of the work, directly adjacent to the red rose.
On verso is the authentication of the work by renowned Dalí expert, Frank Hunter, written in pencil: "Frank Hunter / 25 Sept 95”. The work comes custom framed and ready for display in a black gallery frame with archival white matting. Framed size measures 35” in height x 26-5/8” width. On the verso of the framed work, a window with hinged closure has been created, to provide and retain viewing of Frank Hunter’s authentication.
Cataloged in Dalí expert Albert Field's authoritative Official Catalog of The Graphic Works of Salvador Dalí, Reference 76-4 D, page 130, Enigma of the Rose is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
Created on Arches paper, Enigma of the Rose was published by Levine and Levine, in a total tirage of 350 on both Arches and Japon paper.
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".