Salvador Dalí­, Abstract Composition, 1975, Silkscreen, Framed

Salvador Dalí­ 1970s Surrealist Dated and Signed Work on Paper
This significant work on paper is a silkscreen print by Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), part of the famous series dedicated to William Shakespeare’s tragedy *Romeo and Juliet*, created by the master of Surrealism for a limited edition published by Rizzoli in Milan.
Signed on the plate in the lower right-hand corner: “Dalí 63”
Hand-signed directly on the sheet in the lower left corner ‘S Dalì’
Specifically, this print depicts the opening scene of the tragedy (Act I, Scene I), where tensions between the Montague and Capulet families erupt in the streets of Verona.
For this series, Dalí employed a refined technique combining lithographic printing with screen-printing interventions, lending the work a distinctive textural quality and chromatic brilliance.
The artist does not confine himself to a literal illustration, but reinterprets the drama through his surrealist lens.
The figures are distorted and spindly, almost ethereal, immersed in a dreamlike landscape where architectural elements (such as the brick walls on the right) appear unstable. Explosions of colour predominate, reflecting the intensity of the emotions described by Shakespeare.
The use of vivid tones such as cobalt blue for the central domed structure and intense reds suggests blood and passion, contrasted with ‘angry’ and nervous contour lines.
The central structure, reminiscent of both a Renaissance dome and a crown of thorns or a cage, dominates the scene.
The golden squiggles and intertwined lines in the sky are characteristic of Dalí’s later style, evoking a sense of cosmic and fateful chaos.
Dimensions are frame and passpartout excluded and the artwork is also protected by glass

This artwork, never before on the market, comes from an important private collection and is beautified by an impressive antique frame.

Surrealist aesthetics was born around the 20s of the twentieth century covering all fields of artistic research.
As for a discourse more properly linked to the visual arts, surrealism arises as a will to investigate the human subconscious and pour it on the work of art through a mechanical writing process based on the analysis of dreams.
Consequently, surrealist works of art propose the representation of a dreamlike dimension, completely dissociated from reality.
However, often, this representation is based on a formal rendering of a hyperrealistic character, precisely to accentuate, paradoxically, the illusory and ambiguous character of the surreal dimension.

The prints are a series in which the painter Salvador Dali represents some moments of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
As we can see, various themes dear to Dalì's poetics return. In the first place the deformation of the bodies, by means of elongations and fleshy masses and the presence of soft organisms.
Secondly, citationism, the extrapolation of images from the art of the past, which consists in taking the same images and re-placing them in an alienating situation.
At a formal level, instead of the most usual hyperrealistic language, we find a more synthetic Dalì that builds the figures with a few graphic features and light veils of colour.

Salvador Dali, (Figueres 1904-1989). Major representative of historical Surrealism, as well as a painter he was a photographer, writer and filmmaker (famous is his collaboration with Luis Buñuel). His works are based on the criteria of psychoanalytic associationism, according to the lesson of Andrè Breton.
His style is characterised by a swollen, hard Hyperrealism, in which the subjects present a maniacal attention to detail. His compositions are a mix of free associations, biomorphic organisms and cultural citations.