Dali Planet #76: In Seurat’s shadow, part 1
Dali and Gala were living in a particular neighbourhood of Paris in 1937, but online sources differ as to exactly where. It could have been at 101b rue de la Tombe-Issoire, an address they might have shared with Henry Miller and Anais Nin, whom they would meet up with again in America in a few years hence.
At any rate, in his studio here Dali painted “Spain 1938″ (click the image above for a large version) and “Enchanted Beach with Three Fluid Graces”. With Gala he arranged a private exhibition on the premises in February 1939, to which, it’s said, Picasso was the first to arrive and the last to leave. He came to see “Spain”, but also on show were “The Great Paranoiac” and “Head of a Woman Having the Form of a Battle”. The works subsequently went on view in June and July at the Alex Reid & Lefevre Gallery in London, where most were purchased by Edward James.
“Throughout all martyred Spain rose an odour of incense,” Dali wrote in reference to the painting above, “of the burning flesh of priests, of spiritual quartered flesh, mixed with the powerful scent of the sweat of mobs fornicating among themselves and with Death.” A da Vinci vision of the Renaissance warriors known as condottieri form the face of a female figure.
