Lot 43 D

Salvador Dalí was one of the 20th century's important artists. Between Surrealism and Dada, his oeuvre ranges from painting to drawing, sculpture and graphic art and all the way to jewellery objects. And Dalí was not least a writer, essayist and stage designer: he left behind an oeuvre that knows no bounds in terms of art forms and which has lastingly influenced performance art and happenings as well as - and especially - the theatre, ballet and film.
Our striking drawing is also vaguely reminiscent of a theatrical set - a tableau which the artist has laid out in receding lines and staged much like a director. The beds of the “Esplanade des Invalides” are surrounded by precise rows of little trees, whose stirring of associations with little soldiers is not coincidental at this site. The blots of ink which have been applied with extreme freedom and which form the right edge of the composition stand in stark contrast to this. The large-format watercolour demonstrates Dalí's standing as a virtuoso of proportion, volumes and space - themes with which the artist intensively occupied himself in the context of his multifaceted work.