14 unseen water colour fruit artworks by the surrealist artist, Salvador Dali have surfaced at Bonhams’ Impressionist and Modern Art and are set for auction June 18. Commissioned in 1969, the art works have been in private hands since their creation.
The series is expected to make close to £1million late next month, with each painting valued at £40,000 – £70,000.
‘These compositions are a fabulous illustration of Dali’s artistic approach.’ William O’Reilly, Director of Bonhams Impressionist department said.
‘By overlaying such traditional images with his famous artistic vocabulary of dragons, hooded figures, crutches and weeping eyes, he gives us an insight into his own hyper-fertile imagination. But most of all, these beautifully fresh images show Dali enjoying himself, poking fun at the demons and fairies lurking behind the straight-laced images of the 19th century science.’
This series of fourteen paintings show Dali’s desire to take the ordinary and subvert it. Dali’s obsession with a warped, sinister version of life is perhaps rooted in his own history. He is quoted, “I myself am surrealism”.
In the ‘FruitDali’ series the artist appropriates very traditional nineteenth century botanical lithographs, designed as scientific illustrations, and paints over them with his characteristically fantastic embellishments.
Dali was surrealism’s most exotic and relentlessly popular figure. His eccentric, attention grabbing behaviour was arguably the product of an abnormal childhood.
The artist had an older brother, also named Salvador, who had died almost exactly 9 months before Dali’s birth. Aged five, he was taken to the grave and told that he was a reincarnation.
“We resembled each other like two drops of water, but we had different reflections.” Dali said of his deceased brother.
“He was probably a first version of myself but conceived too much in the absolute”. In his own eyes, Dali was a distorted version of his elder sibling.
