From his earliest creations in the 1930s, Dalí’s contribution to sculpture was aligned with the precepts that consistently governed his art. Of particular note were his contribution to surrealist objects in the 1930s and the jewellery he designed beginning in the 1940s, sometimes in collaboration with internationally renowned jewellers, such as Fulco di Verdura. Equally noteworthy were his ephemeral installations and architecture, some done for such special occasions as the 1939 New York World’s Fair or for the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, his largest surrealist object, which opened its doors in 1974. Dalí’s sculpture work was particularly shaped by his research on 20th-century materials, techniques and processes, which he used to create singular, landmark works.
I also made in this period a copy of the Venus de Milo in clay; I derived from this, my first attempt at sculpture, an unmistakable and delightful erotic pleasure.
Salvador Dalí
This excerpt from The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, published in 1942, bears witness to what may have been the artist’s first childhood foray into sculpture. However, uncertainty remains regarding the date of his first sculptural work. Although there is some evidence suggesting he may have participated in the decoration of some objects in the early 1920s, the first clearly documented works date from around 1930, when he embraced surrealism.
In 1931, he published an article in Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution (Surrealism in the Service of the Revolution) that became a sort of manifesto on the new possibilities of the symbolically functioning object, taking André Breton’s proposal regarding objects one step further. In it, he theorized about six categories of surrealist objects and presented his Objet à fonctionnement symbolique (Object Functioning Symbolically) (OE 1). In a way, these creations support the theory of the liberation of the unconscious developed as part of his paranoiac-critical method, which he first put forward in his 1930 book La Femme Visible (The Visible Woman). Surrealist objects are one of Dalí’s main contributions to surrealism and one of the most remarkable creations of his career. The technique he used for many of them was assemblage. In this period, Dalí supplemented his three-dimensional output with numerous essays on the theory of objects, including, in particular, ‘The Object as Revealed in Surrealist Experiment’, from 1932, ‘Objets psycho-atmosphériques-anamorphiques’ (Psycho-atmospheric-anamorphic objects), from 1933, and ‘Honneur à l’objet!’ (Honour to the object!), from 1936.
In parallel to his surrealist objects, Dalí also made plaster sculptures, especially between 1933 and 1936. His famous Venus de Milo aux tiroirs (Venus de Milo with Drawers) from 1936 (OE 24) is one of the most outstanding examples. Separately, in the second half of the 1930s, his ephemeral installations and architectural designs gained prominence. His window displays for the Bonwit Teller department stores or the Dream of Venus pavilion that he created expressly for the 1939 New York World’s Fair bear witness to the expansion of Dalí’s production into three-dimensional space. This new creative space would ultimately definitively emerge in the 1970s, in the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres.
Another area of three-dimensional art in which Dalí made outstanding contributions is jewellery design. His 1940 collaboration with Fulco di Verdura on the creation of a series of six pieces, halfway between jewellery and goldsmithing, is one of the most important testaments to this. Later, in the mid-1940s, he embarked on a major project with the New York jewellery firm Alemany & Ertman to design and execute a collection of jewels for the Catherwood Foundation in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. These pieces were acquired in 1958 by the Owen Cheatham Foundation, which, in turn, lent them to various non-profit, educational and cultural organizations for use in fundraising exhibitions. All the pieces from this collection were made with noble materials and precious stones, and some, such as Ruby Lips and The Eye of Time from 1949, The Royal Heart from 1953, or Chalice of Life from 1965, have become icons of Dalí’s oeuvre.
At the same time, beginning in the 1940s and until about the late 1960s, Dalí made various types of sculptures and objects using a wide range of materials and techniques for specific projects. In this context, the objects, sculptures, and installations he made for his home in Portlligat stand out, an effort he redoubled upon his return from the United States in 1948 with various enlargements and renovations.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Dalí also authorized the production of editions of his sculptures, such as the bronze editions of some of his surrealist sculptures and objects from the 1930s. One of the most significant examples was Buste de femme rétrospectif (Retrospective Bust of a Woman), a creation from 1933 made on a porcelain bust that was the subject of a limited edition of bronzes between 1976 and 1977. One of the main reasons for these editions was most likely to ensure that there were works to be shown in the many retrospective exhibitions held in those years.
Another milestone in Dalí’s sculptural output was the process of conceiving of and creating the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres. The artist proposed numerous objects, sculptures, and installations for both the museum’s interior and exterior, which today contribute to this space’s inimitable idiosyncrasy. The installation Rainy Taxi and the architectural sculptures known as the ‘grotesque monsters’ in the central courtyard, the plaster sculptures crowning the geodesic dome, or the various display cases located, in particular, along the first-floor corridor, bear witness to the conceptual richness of his sculptural creations. The many sculptures, manipulated objects, and jewels housed in the museum likewise offer insight into the heterogeneity of materials, techniques and processes that Dalí used for his three-dimensional work over the course of his career.
