Divinite Chevauchant Un Dauphin

“Salvador Dalí’s ‘Divinité Chevauchant un Dauphin’, 225 cm high with base, is a work that perfectly embodies the Catalan artist’s dreamlike imagery and visionary symbolism. It depicts an anthropomorphic figure, a naked and slender deity, riding a dolphin in a dynamic and theatrical pose. In this way, the artist fuses myth, dream and movement in a dreamlike vision: a divine, athletic and stylised figure riding a dolphin with a heroic gesture.

The work recalls marine and mythological symbolism reinterpreted in a surrealist key. The bronze, modelled in fluid and distorted forms, gives life to a timeless tale, where the body becomes thought and the material becomes dream, recalling the marine, almost liquid, movement that is the stylistic hallmark of his surrealist poetics.

Dalí, who has always been fascinated by the classical world and marine symbolism, proposes in this sculpture a personal reinterpretation of the Greek divinities, perhaps evoking Triton or Apollo Dolphin riding the sea.

However, as in all of his work, the mythological narrative is filtered through the lens of dreams, memory and sublimated sexuality. The title, in French, accentuates the archaic and mythological tone of the work, as if it were an artefact out of time, emerging from an ancient abyss of the psyche.

A work that combines mythological power with the tension of the Surrealist gesture, Dalí depicts with this sculpture a soaring divinity that tells of metamorphosis, freedom and imagination: a dream sculpted in bronze.

Monumental edition 5/8, made by Fonderie Bonvicini, Verona, work also known as Homme Chevauchant un dauphin.

One specimen is installed on the Pomenade in Marbella, Avenida del Mar, a second at the Real Círcuito Artístico in Barcelona.

Work accompanied by Certificate of Authenticity by Nicolas R. Descharnes.

Exhibitions:

Arezzo, Palazzo della Provincia, Atrio d’onore – 14 to 20 May 2018

Bibliography:

Dalí – Le dur et le mou, Sortilège er magie des formes, Sculpture & Object – Rober et Nicolas Descharnes, ©ECCART 2003 – pag. 179 tab. 446