Tag Archives: Selfportrait

0232-Selfportrait dedicated to Federico Garcia Lorca (1928)

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Pen and Indian ink on paper, 16 x 22 cm Juan Abello Prat collection, Barcelona

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Selfportrait dedicated to Federico Garcia Lorca (1928)
Autoportrait dédié à Federico Garcia Lorca

Analysis: This selfportrait in ink is dedicated to Federico Garcia Lorca, a Spanish poet and playwright Dalí met at the Madrid Academy of Fine Arts. Dalí and Lorca became very close. Lorca was known to be homosexual but the extent of Dalí’s relationship with him has never been entirely clear. There are some references in letters and writing to Lorca’s attempts to sodomize Dalí; one incident on a beach near Cadaqués is thought to have contributed to the decline of their relationship as Dalí had an acute fear of sexual contact and was repelled by Lorca’s advances.
The selfportrait, although just a sketch, shows a more confident Dalí than the one seen in his 1923 painting “Selfportrait with L’Humanité“. He has grown what would later be his trademark mustache, the ends emphatically turned up. The selfportrait also shows Dalí’s new style of dress, he is wearing a fancy hat and a cravat. When he became part of a group of literary and artistic avant-garde students, among whom Lorca was the leader, he began to dress as they did, as a dandy. It was a style that he was to keep, exaggerating it greatly in his later years.

0128-Selfportrait with l’Humanité (1923)

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Oil, gouache and collage on cardboard, 75,4 x 104,9 cm Fundacion Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueras

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Selfportrait with l’Humanité (1923)
Autoportrait à l’Humanité

Analysis: This “Selfportrait with L’Humanité” was painted while Dalí was at the Madrid Academy of Fine Arts. The title refers to a French Socialist newspaper “L’Humanité” to which Dalí subscribed. In the background to the right of Dalí is part of the word “L’Humanité”; Dalí cut out the title from the front page and pasted it on to the painting, giving a collage effect, to create contrasting textures and formats within the piece.
As with a lot of artists, Dalí did many selfportraits that were reflective of his life at the time of painting them. Here we see an almost featureless Dalí compared to the realistic portrait in the 1921 painting, “Selfportrait with the neck of Raphael“. Although this featureless depiction is reflective of the Cubist style of painting that Dalí was exploring, it may also be indicative of his feelings about himself, a young man trying to find his own identity. Dalí has included humanity here almost as a way of stating who he is through his reading materials, which were rather exclusive, rather than through his featureless self. Dalí has no mouth in this painting, an image that is repeated in many of his later paintings, personifying loss of control and subsequent fear.
Source: dali-gallery.com

0085-Selfportrait with the neck of Raphael (1921)

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Oil on canvas, 53 x 41,5 cm Fundacion Gala-Salvador Dali (Figueras)

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Selfportrait with the neck of Raphael (1921)
Autoportrait au cou de Raphaël

Analysis: Here we see Dalí at the age of about seventeen at the top of the road that dominates all Cadaqués and leads to the cove of Seboya. The village appears in the background, sparkling in the morning sunshine. Behind Dalí we see what is nearly an island, Sortell, the estate of the Pichots. Dalí often went to this spot to paint the landscape in different lights. Speaking of this canvas, which is small in size, he relates: “At that time they called me Senor Patinas because I wore sideburns; it was in the middle of my student days at the Academy of Fine Arts, in 1921, when these sideburns were the longest. At the time of this painting, my hair was starting to grow but not as much. It was painted by the light of the setting sun. Sometimes I got up at dawn and I worked on four or five pictures at the same time. My canvases were brought to me, but I myself was wearing an outfit with all the brushes attached to it by strings, which made me into a sort of hippie! It allowed me immediately to grab the brush I needed. Later I wore a mechanic’s suit which was so smeared with glue as to become a veritable suit of armor.” All Dalí’s interest is turned to the atmosphere of the picture; for the sake of accuracy, he had to return to the scene every day at the exact hour when the sun hit the village, leaving the cliff in the foreground in the shadow, where he placed himself. Then he worked on the likeness of himself in front of a mirror in his studio during the hot hours of the day.
Source: dali-gallery.com