Dalí Theatre-Museum. The Collection

Dalí i Domènech, Salvador

Portrait of Pablo Picasso in the Twenty-first Century (One of a series of portraits of Geniuses: Homer, Dali, Freud, Christopher Columbus, William Tell, etc.)

Date
1947
Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
65,5 x 56 cm
Location
Dalí Theatre-Museum

Allegorical portrait of Picasso, painted during Dalí’s American stage and exhibited in the Bignou gallery in New York, from the 25th of November 1947 to the 31st of January 1948. Dalí wanted it to form part of the permanent collection in the Dalí Theatre-Museum of Figueres and decided to place it in the Fishmongers’ Room facing his Soft Self-portrait with Grilled Bacon, of 1941. He gave the oil painting a long name, qualified Picasso as a genius —in the work Moi aussi j’ai connu l’Empereur he saw him as an emperor and would present him crowned with a laurel wreath— and placed him in the XXI century, both in the title and on the canvas, where the corresponding Roman numerals appear. The carnation, the goat’s horns or the mandolin refer to values such as intellectualism, the exaltation of ugliness or the sentimentalism present in the work of the Malaga artist, for whom he felt great admiration.

© Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2014.

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  • Portrait of Pablo Picasso in the Twenty-first Century (One of a series of portraits of Geniuses: Homer, Dali, Freud, Christopher Columbus, William Tell, etc.)

    Portrait of Pablo Picasso in the Twenty-first Century (One of a series of portraits of Geniuses: Homer, Dali, Freud, Christopher Columbus, William Tell, etc.)