Spanish painter, printmaker and sculptor Salvador Dalí was a leading figure in Surrealism in the 1930s and became one of the most significant, and notorious, artists of the twentieth century.
‘I have an extraordinary weapon available to me – mysticism, that is, the deep intuition of what is, the immediate communion with the whole, the absolute vision through the grace of truth, by divine grace.’
Best known for his images of melting watches in a dream world of sunlit landscapes, Dalí produced over 1,500 paintings and a total of more than 4,000 works of art, including sculptures, drawings, engravings, holograms, photographs and jewellery. Renowned for his surreal acts and flamboyant self-publicity, he wrote, 'At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.' Dalí's influences range from cubism and Dada to the meticulous detail of nineteenth-century genre painting and earlier Old Masters.
Painted in 1958, Paysage de Port Lligat depicts the small bay in Cadaqués that was visible from Salvador Dalí’s studio window. It belongs to a distinct group of works from the late 1950s in which Dalí painted the bay from different vantage points. Port Lligat, situated on the north-eastern coast of Spain close to the border of France is where Dalí and his wife Gala had settled in 1948 on returning from New York – their home during the War years – and it remained their principal residence for the following decades.
It was also close to the small town of Figueres where the artist was born. The strange rock formations and eerie stillness of the coastline gave the landscape a haunting presence that lent itself well to Dalí’s surrealist aesthetic.
To the foreground of the painting a number of figures can be seen, each carrying their own symbolism typical of the artistic style which Dalí termed ‘Nuclear Mysticism’. While partly drawing on scientific and mathematical concepts such as geometry and symmetry, the new style also marked a significant introduction of religious and classical imagery in his work. While the angel is religiously symbolic of the annunciation (and often used by Dalí to represent his wife, Gala), the inclusion of the man seated on a rock, leaning forward in a moment of contemplation, recalls both August Rodin’s famous sculpture, The Thinker, and William Blake’s depiction of the scientist Isaac Newton, both representative of scientific thought and reason.
Salvador Dalí's Still Life with a Tin Vase and Lilies from 1963 is typical of the artist's self-coined 'Nuclear Mysticism', a style which developed out of his interest in contemporary scientific developments, classicism and religion. Following his return from the United States in 1948, Dalí introduced evocative religious imagery to his paintings and drew greater inspiration from the Old Masters of Western art. Here, the white lilies and the angel of the annunciation are clearly symbolic of the Madonna, while the lemon and quince could have been lifted from a seventeenth-century painting by Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán.
Dalí had a particular interest in the Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci, not only for his talent as a painter, but also for his legendary scientific knowledge. In Still Life with a Tin Vase and Lilies, the lower part of the canvas is constructed according to the 'golden ratio' - also known as the 'golden section' or 'divine proportion' - a mathematical technique employed by Leonardo in works such as The Last Supper (1490s). The distant Mediterranean landscape is also particularly evocative of the Renaissance artist's work.
Paysage de Port Lligat, Salvador Dali, Les Deux Bouquets, Marc Chagall, Halcyon Gallery, 2021
Un Bras de la Seine près de Vétheuil, Claude Monet, La Baigneuse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paysage de Port Lligat, Salvador Dali, Le Peintre, Pablo Picasso, Halcyon Gallery, 2021
