{"id":9085,"date":"2014-01-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-12T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salvador-dali.org\/fundacio-dali\/noticia\/adquisicio-d-una-pintura-de-l-epoca-surrealista\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T10:20:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T08:20:12","slug":"the-dali-foundation-acquires-a-surrealist-painting","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/www.salvador-dali.org\/en\/dali-foundation\/news\/the-dali-foundation-acquires-a-surrealist-painting\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dal\u00ed Foundation acquires a surrealist painting"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fundaci\u00f3 Gala-Salvador Dal\u00ed acquired a surrealist oil-on-wood panel painting entitled Phantom Cart<\/a> <\/em><\/strong>from 1933. It can be seen in the Treasure Room of the Dal\u00ed Theatre-Museum in Figueres.<\/p>\n

This painting belonged to Edward James (1907-1984), a British poet, known as a staunch defender of surrealism. He sponsored Dal\u00ed between 1936 and 1939, and was also a patron of Ren\u00e9 Magritte. His home, Monkton House, next to West Dean House in Sussex (UK) was a surrealist dream: it contained a large sofa which Dal\u00ed shaped and coloured to mimic Mae West\u2019s lips (his well-known lips sofa) and the lobster-telephone, which Dal\u00ed designed in collaboration with the poet.<\/p>\n

In Phantom Cart<\/a><\/em>, we see, at the centre of a bright arid plain, a two-wheeled wagon heading towards a city. The shape of the cart seems to blend with the city, thus becoming its own destination. The effect is an illusion of perspective in which the painter uses his skill to try to confuse us once again. Where we expect to see the wheels, there are instead two stakes driven into the ground. The characters seen sitting in the wagon are identified with the architecture of the city in the background. In this painting, as in other optical illusions used by the painter, an important role is played by the technique Dal\u00ed named the paranoiac-critical method: “spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena.” We see a cart and a city or both elements at the same time.<\/p>\n

The wagon or cart was a typical means of transport during the painter\u2019s youth. In his autobiography The Secret Life of Salvador Dal\u00ed<\/em> he mentions this in relation to the Pichot family: “I started off in a cart with Mr and Mrs Pichot and Julia, their adopted daughter of sixteen, who had long black hair. Mr Pichot drove the cart himself.” The wagon is also an element present in surrealist iconography and in the films of Luis Bu\u00f1uel, such as for example Belle de jour<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Dal\u00ed and his landscape were inseparable elements in the painter\u2019s artistic production. Josep Pla gave a very precise description of Dal\u00ed in his book Homenots <\/em>(\u2018Great Men\u2019), which he dedicated to the artist:<\/p>\n

“At that time [1926] Dal\u00ed was like a starved leopard. However it was simply the arrogance of youth that would inevitably pass. And, in fact, whenever he expressed himself with total honesty during these years, his qualities as an artist appeared immediately as he sketched the landscape of Alt Empord\u00e0, which has been, is still and will continue to be his life\u2019s obsession. From this base Dal\u00ed took the first steps towards his later great creations, produced with prodigious precision and lucid realism. When we, the natives of Empord\u00e0, saw that wagon sitting on a broad plain, beneath the clean arc of the sky, washed out, bright and immense, we truly knew that our painter had been born \u2013 the painter that had discovered and understood our land as well as any farmer could.”<\/p>\n

From a technical point of view, this painting reminds us of other pieces in our collection such as Portrait of Mr. Emilio Terry<\/em><\/a>, The Spectre of Sex-Appeal<\/em><\/a> and Portrait of Gala with Two Chops Balanced on her Shoulder<\/em><\/a>, because of its meticulousness, characteristic of the period when Dal\u00ed painted Phantom Cart<\/em>. Also, the use of fine wood, such as mahogany in this case, the reduced size of the painting created using precise brushstrokes, with transparent layers and almost imperceptible details together warrant this painting occupying a position of honour in the Treasure Room of the Dal\u00ed Theatre-Museum in Figueres, which this year celebrates its 40th anniversary.<\/p>\n

800×600<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fundaci\u00f3 Gala-Salvador Dal\u00ed acquired a surrealist oil-on-wood panel painting entitled Phantom Cart from 1933. It can be seen in the Treasure Room of the Dal\u00ed Theatre-Museum in Figueres. This painting belonged to Edward James (1907-1984), a British poet, known as a staunch defender of surrealism. He sponsored Dal\u00ed between 1936 and 1939, and was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":4863,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":""},"categoria-actualitat":[101],"class_list":["post-9085","noticia","type-noticia","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","categoria-actualitat-adquisitions"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Dal\u00ed Foundation acquires a surrealist painting - Fundaci\u00f3 Gala - Salvador Dal\u00ed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.salvador-dali.org\/en\/dali-foundation\/news\/the-dali-foundation-acquires-a-surrealist-painting\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Dal\u00ed Foundation acquires a surrealist painting - Fundaci\u00f3 Gala - Salvador Dal\u00ed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Fundaci\u00f3 Gala-Salvador Dal\u00ed acquired a surrealist oil-on-wood panel painting entitled Phantom Cart from 1933. 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