The Collection

Dalí i Domènech, Salvador

Untitled. Swallow’s Tail and Cellos (Catastrophes Series)

Date
1983
Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
73,2 x 92,2 cm
Location
Dalí Theatre-Museum

This is the last oil painting that Dalí painted. He did it in the castle of Púbol and in this applied knowledge expressed by the mathematician René Thom in his book Structural Stability and Morphogenesis. Dalí uses the form of the cello, to which he attributes symbolic functions of sentiment rather than any musical presence.In this last Dalinian period, the cello is the main subject matter, always with a painful mission; in other canvases it appears attacked by bedside tables. It is rather like a wounded ego and, in this case, it participates in the representation of a swallow’s tail, the most determinant element, due to its poetic content, of all the descriptions and graphic art that he had produced in the catastrophe theory. He therefore brings these two coinciding points together: pain and beauty.

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

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  • Untitled. Swallow’s Tail and Cellos (Catastrophes Series)

    Untitled. Swallow’s Tail and Cellos (Catastrophes Series)