IMAGE
IMAGE

Artwork Details

Title
Atmospheric Skull Sodomizing a Grand Piano

Maker
Salvador Dalí
Date Made
1934
Materials
Oil on panel
Dimensions
Image: 5 1/2 in x 7 in
Accession ID Number
2007.4
Credit Line
Collection of The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL (USA); Gift of A. Reynolds & Eleanor Morse 2007.4
Location
ON VIEW
Copyright
In the USA ©Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc. St. Petersburg, FL 2023 / Worldwide rights ©Salvador Dalí. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí (Artists Rights Society), 2023.

Supplemental material

Description

In his 1935 book The Conquest of the Irrational, Dalí states that his intention is to create “…hand-done color photography… [photography of] the superfine, extravagant, extra-plastic, super-pictorial, super-plastic, deceptive, hyper normal and sickly images of concrete irrationality.” Dalí’s hand-painted color photographs are created on the scale of a snapshot. Through this technique, Dalí has created the perfect enigma, turning the animate into the inanimate.

This alarming piece has been described as “a little jewel of a painting.” Dalí has so successfully captured the golden luminescence of the Mediterranean sun that the work virtually glows; however, the scene it depicts is shocking. Two inanimate objects, a piano and a skull, have come to life and are engaging in a violent act. The sweeping shadows and diagonal of the fisherman's boat accentuate the skull’s aggressive movement. This act stands in shocking contrast to the idyllic calm that pervades this otherwise realistic scene.

Exhibition History:
1934, Paris, Jacques Bonjean, “Exposition Dali”
1956, Knokke Le Zoute, Casino de Knokke Le Zoute, “Salvador Dalí”
1965, New York, Gallery of Modern Art, “Salvador Dalí, 1910-1965”
2000, Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, “Dalí's Optical Illusions”
2000, Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, “Dalí's Optical Illusions”
2000, Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, “Dalí's Optical Illusions”
2009, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, "Salvador Dalí : Liquid Desire"

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