SALVADOR DALÍ I DOMÈNECH (Figueras, Girona, 1904... Lot 30

SALVADOR DALÍ I DOMÈNECH (Figueras, Girona, 1904 - 1989). "Christ of Saint John of the Cross". Bronze sculpture, example A-266/350. Base in veined black marble. Signed on the right leg. Numbered on the foot of the cross. Enclosed authenticity card of Exmundart. Measurements: 43,5 x 20,5 x 12,5 cm (figure); 7 x 16 x 16 cm (base). This bronze sculpture represents the "Christ of Saint John of the Cross", a transposition of the canvas by Salvador Dalí kept in the Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow, UK. Painted in 1951, it is one of the Surrealist master's most emblematic paintings. For the position of the Christ, the painter was inspired by a painting by Saint John of the Cross, kept in the Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila. The piece was cast from a model directly modelled in wax by Dalí, demonstrating his mastery in the field of sculpture. A painter and sculptor, Salvador Dalí was one of the leading exponents of the Surrealist movement. He made his individual debut in 1925 at the Dalmau Galleries in Barcelona. In 1926, after being expelled from the San Fernando School of Fine Arts for indiscipline, he went to Paris. There he met the young Picasso and, four years later, joined the Surrealist movement. Dalí's production during this period was based on Freud's theories, acclaimed by Breton: representation of dreamlike images and everyday objects in unsuspected and surprising compositional forms. Some of the characteristics of his work at this time became distinctive of all his later work. He also absorbed the influences of diverse artistic styles, from classical academicism to the most groundbreaking avant-garde. His work greatly influenced the direction of Surrealism in the years that followed, and he was acclaimed as the originator of the paranoiac-critical method, the essential combination of the real and the imaginary. Following his first solo exhibition in New York in 1934, his international reputation was definitively consolidated. Most of his production is housed in the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueras, followed by the collection of the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg (Florida), the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Salvador Dalí Gallery in Pacific Palisades (California), the Espace Dalí in Montmartre (Paris) and the Dalí Universe in London.