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Lot Essay
Cavaliers sur la plage (recto); ésquisse d'un chevalier avec lance (verso) strikingly displays Salvador Dalí’s extraordinary talents as a draughtsman. The recto intricately features a group of emaciated figures with white-haired horses while the verso depicts an ebauche of knight on horseback carrying a scroll in his right arm. Drawn in 1937, an ominous period of political uncertainty in Europe, and especially in Spain, the work features one of Dali’s most cherished themes, the horse and the rider armed with a scroll.
From the 1930s onwards, Dalí was marked by a strong sense of anxiety about the idea of death which, as did Freud before him, he perceived as the opposite of sexual instinct (Dalí, Genius, Obsession and Lust, p. 56). Over that period, strange shroud-covered spectres, skulls and other clear images of death, putrefaction, decay and dissolution recurrently permeated Dali's dreamscapes and newly-developed paranoiac-critical landscapes. The horseman became a prevalent motif in his works between 1933 and 1936, alluding to the story of Don Quixote as productively as it did to Le chevalier de la mort (The Knight (or Horseman) of Death).
The theme of Le chevalier de la mort in Dalí's art is highly indicative of the turbulent period in which they were made. The subject is founded loosely on the specific Christian theme of the journey of the Knight of Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which consistently appears in the artist's work. It echoes the four riders of the Apocalypse immortalised in the eponymous engraving by Albrecht Dürer in 1513.
Literature also played a major role in his influences for the horseman and the emblematic figure of Don Quixote of the Mancha, a hero invented in 1605 by Cervantes, was of particular interest to him. Dali’s horseman indeed mirrors Don Quixote’s systematic representation at horseback, carrying a ling scroll in his hand. The omnipresent duality between socio-political satire and absurd reverie in this novel of chivalry found a pictorial symbolism in Dalí's artistic expression. Four lithographs on Don Quixote were in fact produced by the artist for a French edition of the book in 1964.
The importance of the work within Dalí’s oeuvre is furthered by its deeply personal provenance and important exhibition history. Acquired directly from the artist by Edward James, the work stayed in his personal collection until 1981 before going to a private collection in South Africa where it remained until today. Amongst the prestigious institutions where the work was exhibited, we count the Centre Pompidou in Paris and at the Tate in London.
From the 1930s onwards, Dalí was marked by a strong sense of anxiety about the idea of death which, as did Freud before him, he perceived as the opposite of sexual instinct (Dalí, Genius, Obsession and Lust, p. 56). Over that period, strange shroud-covered spectres, skulls and other clear images of death, putrefaction, decay and dissolution recurrently permeated Dali's dreamscapes and newly-developed paranoiac-critical landscapes. The horseman became a prevalent motif in his works between 1933 and 1936, alluding to the story of Don Quixote as productively as it did to Le chevalier de la mort (The Knight (or Horseman) of Death).
The theme of Le chevalier de la mort in Dalí's art is highly indicative of the turbulent period in which they were made. The subject is founded loosely on the specific Christian theme of the journey of the Knight of Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which consistently appears in the artist's work. It echoes the four riders of the Apocalypse immortalised in the eponymous engraving by Albrecht Dürer in 1513.
Literature also played a major role in his influences for the horseman and the emblematic figure of Don Quixote of the Mancha, a hero invented in 1605 by Cervantes, was of particular interest to him. Dali’s horseman indeed mirrors Don Quixote’s systematic representation at horseback, carrying a ling scroll in his hand. The omnipresent duality between socio-political satire and absurd reverie in this novel of chivalry found a pictorial symbolism in Dalí's artistic expression. Four lithographs on Don Quixote were in fact produced by the artist for a French edition of the book in 1964.
The importance of the work within Dalí’s oeuvre is furthered by its deeply personal provenance and important exhibition history. Acquired directly from the artist by Edward James, the work stayed in his personal collection until 1981 before going to a private collection in South Africa where it remained until today. Amongst the prestigious institutions where the work was exhibited, we count the Centre Pompidou in Paris and at the Tate in London.