Signed in lead under the engraving l.: EA., p.: Dali
The work is from the portfolio Hommage A Leonardo da Vinci(American Inventions | American Inventions) - La Frein Hydraulique(The Hydraulic Brake | HydraulicBrake ), 1975.
Work described and reproduced in the catalog:
- Salvador Dali. Catalogue Raisonné of Etchings and Mixed-Media Prints 1924-1980. edited by Ralf Michler and Lutz W. Löpsinger, Prestel, Munich - New York 1995, p. 245, cat. 816, il. s. 246.
Salvador Dali (Figueres 11 V 1904 - Figueres 23 I 1989) in 1921 began studying at the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, which he attended intermittently until 1926, when he was expelled (not for the first time) for his anarchist views and eccentric behavior. His friends from his student days included Federico Garcia Lorca, Luis Bunuel, Rafael Alberti, among others. Dali was passionate about new directions in art, exhibited from 1925, and also wrote a lot for art magazines. In 1926 he went to Paris for the first time, where he met Picasso; he was there again in 1928, and this time he met Tristan Tzara and a group of Surrealists centered around André Breton. In 1929, he and Breton made the film "The Andalusian Dog" together. In the summer he met and became involved with Gala Eluard, henceforth a lifelong muse. Over the course of the 1930s, he devised and practiced his own so-called paranoid-critical method, at which time his best-known works were created, such as "Persistence of Memory" (1931). This small painting, exhibited that year in New York at the Surrealist exhibition, became a symbol of the movement and opened the way for the artist to pursue an American-style career. Dali and Gala stayed in the U.S. on several occasions, the longest between 1939 and 1948, after fleeing civil war-stricken Spain and, in turn, Paris, which was threatened by German occupation. His return to Spain was followed by a "mystical period" in Dali's work, which included great compositions based on religious iconographic canons ("Madonna of Port Lligat," "The Last Supper"). In 1964 he published "Diary of a Genius." The artist's last years were marked by travel and extravagance. After Gala's death in 1982, Dali remained in voluntary seclusion until the end.