Sphinx (Verso) Study for a Portrait of a Woman Drawing 1955 9x12 - HS

Year1955

Hand SignedLower Right 

Condition Excellent 

Not Framed 

Purchased fromAuction House 2022 

Provenance / HistoryTitle: “Sphinx” au verso “Etude de portrait de femme (s.9194) Sphinx verso Study for a portrait of a woman. Medium: Original pencil drawing on verge gris paper, circa 1955, inscribed in top right centre “12” , with apocryphal signature in black ink, With the stamp of the Perrot-Moore Museum, Cadaques, verso. Authentication: Certificate from Nicolas Descharnes dated 31/7/2019 Archive number d6931 

Story / Additional Info
John Peter Moore, A former British Army captain, first met Dalí in 1956 when he was working with film producer and director Alexander Korda in Rome, and arranged for him to be paid in cash for a painting of Laurence Olivier as Richard III. The two became friends. In 1960 Dalí employed Moore as his personal secretary and, from 1965, as his business manager. Together with Dalí's wife, Gala, they travelled regularly to New York for the winter, Paris for the spring, and Cadaqués, in northern Spain, for the summer. Moore made money for Dalí through his merchandising schemes. "I was Goldfinger to Dalí," Moore said later. "I suggested he make graphics, lithographs, bed sheets, shoes, socks, ties anything saleable.” Although he was replaced in 1975, he maintained good relations with Dalí and Gala. With his wife, Catherine Perrot, he opened the Perrot-Moore Museum in Cadaqués in 1978 to show his collection of Dalís to the public. Some were gifts from the artist, others he had acquired through dealers, collectors or auctions. In 2003, aged 85 and with his reputation under fire, Moore closed the museum. He had no children and has decided to sell. Most works were sold at a huge auction in Paris organised by Artcuriel. Items coming from this source have, therefore, a direct link to Dali himself. Most if not all the works were stamped with the Museum stamp which can be seen on our work.
 

Certificate of AuthenticityNicolas Descharnes 

LID165894

Salvador Dali - Spain

Art Brokerage: Park West Artist: Salvador Dali Spanish Artist: Salvador Dalí was a renowned Spanish Surrealist artist known for his enigmatic paintings of dreamscapes and religious themes. The Persistence of Memory (1931), arguably his best known work, visually manifests the strangeness of time by depicting clocks melting in an idyllic landscape. "One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams," he once reflected. Born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech on May 11, 1904 in Figueres, Spain, he displayed a great aptitude for the visual arts as a teenager. Three years after his first exhibition at the age of 14, he enrolled at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. At school, he emulated many contemporary styles but also the works of Johannes Vermeer and Diego Velázquez. During his visits to Paris in the late 1920s, he was introduced to the Surrealist movement by René Magritte and Joan Miró. Though the concept of Surrealism was new to him, Dalí was already well versed in the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. Dabbling in various projects throughout his long career, in 1942 he published the book The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. A mixture of self-aggrandizing confessions and sadistic fantasies about his childhood, the book further outlined the artist's outlandish persona. However, his pronounced sense of ego was not always unfounded, as evinced in his works inclusion in Alfred Hitchcock's famous dream sequence from the film Spellbound (1945). Dalí died on January 23, 1989 in his hometown of Figueres, Spain. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Reina Sofia National Museum in Madrid, and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, among others. Listings wanted.