Description

Número de catàleg raonat OG:
OG 010
Propietari:
Estat Espanyol
Ens dipositari:
Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí
Fons:
Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres

L’Immaculée conception, a volume of poems by André Breton and Paul Éluard, with a frontispiece by Dalí, printed on 24 November 1930, at the Ducros et Colas printing house, was commissioned by Éditions Surréalistes in Paris, as stated in the colophon. Dalí’s illustration was reproduced using heliogravure retouched in drypoint, based on a pen-and-ink drawing. The artist also designed the vignette that appeared on the book’s cover and title page. The book’s four sections – ‘L’Homme’ (Man), ‘Les Possessions’ (Possessions), ‘Les Méditations’ (Meditations), and ‘Le Jugement Original’ (The Original Judgment) – were conceived with the intention of breaking with traditional literary formulas and inspired by the simulation of delusions. The text ‘L’Homme’ had been published a month earlier in Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution No. 2, October 1930, accompanied by other vignettes created by Dalí at the request of Breton and Éluard, who warned the artist – while apologising in advance – of the need to moderate the content of his illustrations to prevent the magazine from being withdrawn for ‘obscenity’ by the censors. Dalí also wrote the please-insert leaflet (prière d’insérer) for the book, in which he declared: ‘If the First and Second Manifestos were the declaration of the manifest content of the surrealist dream, THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION is the exposition of its latent content.’ Dalí’s frontispiece alludes literally to one of the aphorisms included in ‘Le Jugement Original’. This is acknowledged by André Breton and Paul Éluard in the dedication addressed to the artist, in which the same words are transcribed: ‘Salvador Dalí’s copy / Until the new order, until the new monastic order, that is, until the / most beautiful young women adopt the cross-shaped neckline: the two horizontal branches revealing / the breasts, the foot of the bare cross / at the foot of the belly, slightly singed. / The greatest token of our / affection, / Paul Éluard André Breton’. __________ (1) Letter from Paul Éluard and André Breton to [Salvador] Dalí, c. 1930. CED. ID 40445. (2) ID38978 Prière d’insérer. (3) ‘Exemplaire de Salvador Dalí / Jusqu’à nouvel ordre, jusqu’au nouvel ordre / monastique, c’est-à-dire jusqu’à ce que les / plus belles jeunes femmes adoptent le décolleté / en croix : les deux branches horizontales décou- / vrant les seins, le pied de la croix nue / au bas du ventre, légèrement roussi. / le plus clair de notre / affection, / Paul Éluard André Breton.

Contact
  1. Original prints (1)
  2. Associated graphic elements (2)