Salvador Dalí

Untitled (Composition with Skeleton Figure) from 'Les Chants de Maldoror'

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About this artwork

This work is from the series of prints Dalí produced for an illustrated revision of Comte de Lautréamont’s poetic novel, Les Chants de Maldoror, in 1934. A kneeling skeletal figure is depicted in the same pose as appears in several other prints. This imagery is almost certainly inspired by two contrasting sources: the illustrations in anatomical treatises from the 16th to 19th centuries, which were much prized by the Surrealists for their equivocal beauty, and also the sculptural ‘bone’ drawings and paintings made by Pablo Picasso between 1928 and 1932, when he was in close contact with the Surrealist movement. Set in a deserted landscape, there is a distinctly ominous feeling to the scene, with the malleable, slug-like forms contrasting with the weakened, crumbling bones.

Updated before 2020

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Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí