SALVADOR DALÍ

(1904-1989)

Hombre muerto sobre mujer

Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Nicolas Descharnes and the late Robert Descharnes.

Provenance
Fundición Diejasa (Isidro Clot), Madrid (commissioned from the artist).
Los Faroles (José Luis Ribera Baño), Mijas (probably acquired from the above).
Private collection, London (acquired from the above in March 1992).

Literature
A. Reynolds Morse, Esculturas Dalí, exh. cat., Teatro-Museo Dalí, Figueres, in association with Fundición Diejasa, Madrid, 1986, p. 104 (another cast illustrated p. 105).
R. & N. Descharnes, Dalí, The Hard and The Soft, Spells for the Magic of Form, Sculptures & Objects, Azay-le-Rideau, 2004, no. 459 (another cast illustrated p. 183).



Initially modelled in wax beneath the Catalan sun, Hombre muerto sobre mujer encapsulates Salvador Dalí's fascination with the eternal cycle of life, death and devotion. The composition evokes one of art history's most poignant archetypes — the lamenting woman cradling the fallen man — a theme that runs from ancient Greek tragedy through Michelangelo's Pietà. Yet in Dalí's hands, this timeless motif becomes a surreal meditation on anguish and transcendence. The draped folds seem to liquefy into rippling flesh, the figures fusing in their grief. The woman's tilted head and flowing robes, the limp and weighty body upon her lap and the textured bronze surface all pulse with emotion, their tactile immediacy a testament to Dalí's spontaneous and instinctive moulding.


By his swimming pool in Port Lligat, between 1969 and 1976, Dalí moulded a series of wax maquettes later known as the Clot Collection. At the time, Dalí's health was faltering from Parkinson's disease, yet his creative energy remained inexhaustible. While his body trembled, his imagination surged. The heat of the Mediterranean softened the wax he had obtained from Sennelier on the Quai Voltaire in Paris, making it pliant within his restless fingers. He would lounge by the sea, sipping Moscato and kneading visions of mythic and religious resonance: Christ and the Madonna, Triton and Perseus, the Muses and Apollo.


Dalí's long-time secretary and friend Robert Descharnes described the ritual of their making: 'As a friend of the couple, I could stay at Dalí's side chatting non-stop while his hands created the pieces of the collection. For this work as a sculptor, Dalí adopted a ritual: a precise hour of the day outside of his atelier, if possible under the sun. And so each afternoon, past midday, Dalí put down his brush and left the atelier for his swimming pool. There, comfortably installed in the depression of an enormous bean bag, Dalí shaped and modelled until it was time to join Gala for a lunch of grilled fish. It was a pleasure to watch this freedom of creativity which was his alone.' (R. & N. Descharnes, Dalí, The Hard and The Soft, Spells for the Magic of Form, Sculptures & Objects, Azay-le-Rideau, 2004, p. 159).


At the behest of his publisher and friend Isidro Clot, these waxes were sent to the Diejasa foundry in Madrid, where they were cast in bronze using the lost-wax process. In total, some forty-four sculptures emerged, each bearing the unmistakable impress of Dalí's touch. The Clot Collection thereby stands apart in his sculptural oeuvre, as a body of three-dimensional works fully modelled by the artist himself. In Hombre muerto sobre mujer, this union of form and feeling reaches an apotheosis. Dalí transforms classical pathos into a vision at once intimate and cosmic — a mother's grief, a lover's despair, and an artist's confrontation with mortality, all immortalised in molten bronze.