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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Robert and Nicholas Descharnes.
Salvador Dalí’s Don Quijote de la Mancha
The following 26 works, illustrating Miguel de Cervantes’ masterpiece El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, form a unique series of drawings executed in the early 1960s by Salvador Dalí. The illustrations were published between 1964 and 1965 in a serialised edition of the novel, distributed through the magazine Tempo, and in 1965 in the Italian edition Don Chisciotte della Mancia, published by Aldo Palazzi Editore in Milan. Extremely varied in its graphic style and entrancing with its phantasmagorical imagery, Dalí’s 1965 series of illustrations for Don Quijote de la Mancha confirms the artist’s fascination for one of the most influential works of Spanish literature. Dalí had already illustrated the novel in 1946 for Random House, at the time of his stay in New York. In 1957, he had returned to the theme in a series of lithographs, published by Joseph Forêt in Pages Choisies de Don Quichotte de la Manche.
In its entirety, the present series illustrates the mesmerising variety of graphic effects deployed by Dalí in his drawings, which range from the obsessive scrawling of ‘Le sofferenze di don Chisciotte’ to the incredibly painterly effect of ‘…scorgemmo una cinquantina di cavalieri…’. The almost pseudoscientific recision of plates such lot 189 – which would serve as frontispiece in the Palazzi’s edition – is counteracted by the outlandish profusion of stains and blots of paint in sheets such as ‘Sancio arriva all’isola’. Don Quixote’s delirious trip through Spain, during which windmills are transformed into menacing giants with rotating arms and flocks of sheep turn into rows of enemy soldiers, finds itself at home in the paranoiac artistic world of Dalí. In its ensemble, the series transposes the chivalric delusions of Don Quixote’s aspirations into the neurotic universe of Dalí, combining the character’s obsession for chivalry with the artist’s relentless fixation on the unrivalled virtuosity and unprecedented visionary power of his own universe.
Salvador Dalí’s Don Quijote de la Mancha
The following 26 works, illustrating Miguel de Cervantes’ masterpiece El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, form a unique series of drawings executed in the early 1960s by Salvador Dalí. The illustrations were published between 1964 and 1965 in a serialised edition of the novel, distributed through the magazine Tempo, and in 1965 in the Italian edition Don Chisciotte della Mancia, published by Aldo Palazzi Editore in Milan. Extremely varied in its graphic style and entrancing with its phantasmagorical imagery, Dalí’s 1965 series of illustrations for Don Quijote de la Mancha confirms the artist’s fascination for one of the most influential works of Spanish literature. Dalí had already illustrated the novel in 1946 for Random House, at the time of his stay in New York. In 1957, he had returned to the theme in a series of lithographs, published by Joseph Forêt in Pages Choisies de Don Quichotte de la Manche.
In its entirety, the present series illustrates the mesmerising variety of graphic effects deployed by Dalí in his drawings, which range from the obsessive scrawling of ‘Le sofferenze di don Chisciotte’ to the incredibly painterly effect of ‘…scorgemmo una cinquantina di cavalieri…’. The almost pseudoscientific recision of plates such lot 189 – which would serve as frontispiece in the Palazzi’s edition – is counteracted by the outlandish profusion of stains and blots of paint in sheets such as ‘Sancio arriva all’isola’. Don Quixote’s delirious trip through Spain, during which windmills are transformed into menacing giants with rotating arms and flocks of sheep turn into rows of enemy soldiers, finds itself at home in the paranoiac artistic world of Dalí. In its ensemble, the series transposes the chivalric delusions of Don Quixote’s aspirations into the neurotic universe of Dalí, combining the character’s obsession for chivalry with the artist’s relentless fixation on the unrivalled virtuosity and unprecedented visionary power of his own universe.