Salvador Dalí

Nicolas and the late Robert Descharnes have confirmed the authenticity of this work, which will be accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity.

Provenance:
John-Peter Moore, Cadaquès, Spain.
Artcurial, Paris, sale of July 1, 2003, lot 218
Artcurial, Paris, sale of February 22, 2006, lot 204.
Acquired directly from the above sale.
Collection of Arthur Brandt, Paris.
His Sale, Sotheby's, Paris, sale of October 21, 2017, lot 158.
Acquired directly from the above sale by the present owner.

Exhibition History:
"Salvador Dalí, Bilder, Zeichnungen, Objekte, eine Ausstellung des Museu Perrot-Moore, Cadaquès, 1981-82 Heidelberg, Ausstellung Schlob-Heidelberg (also traveled to Austria, Germany and Switzerland)
no. 27 (illustrated in the accompanying exhibition catalogue).
"Dalí en Argentina," Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1986 (illustrated in the accompanying exhibition catalogue).
"Dalí no Brasil," São Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna, 1986 (illustrated in the accompanying exhibition catalogue).
"Salvador Dalí, Huiles, Dessins, Sculptures, 1983-84," Réfectoire des Jacobins, Toulouse (illustrated in the accompanying exhibition catalogue).
"A Private Eye: Dada, Surrealism and More from the Brandt Collection," Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, Cornell University, 2006 (illustrated in the accompanying exhibition catalogue p. 27).

Lot Essay:
This original work is executed from a photograph of the iconic 1937 painting Le Sommeil (in private hands), with additional collage elements taken from another photograph shot under the direction of Dalí in the studio of the photographer Djon Milli in New York.

In this work, Dalí returns to a classic motif favored by Surrealists, as sleep (and dreams) evoke a state of unconsciousness and mental wandering, which favor artistic creativity. Sleep is personified by an elongated face which loosely adopts Dalí's features (on both accounts, as its particular shape mirrors that of Cadaquès, the artist's Catalan refuge). The sleepy head is propped on several crutches, which have always been one of Dalí's trademarks as they suggest the fragility of the frontier between dream and reality. As he explained to his readers in Le Minotaure: “I have often imagined and depicted the sleep monster as a giant heavy head with a spindly body supported by the crutches of reality. When these crutches break, we have the sensation of “falling”. Most of my readers have experienced this feeling of falling suddenly into the void, exactly at the minute when sleep is about to take over them completely."