December 11, 2007 – January 9, 2008 - William Bennett Gallery is proud to present The Spiritual Art of Salvador Dalí exhibiting for the first time in it’s entirety, the five-volume work of Salvador Dalí’s Biblia Sacra, featuring the complete 105 original lithographs, published in 1969 by Rizzoli Editions, Milan, Italy, and the complete six-volume, 100 woodblock prints of Dalí’s German edition of Dante Alighieri’s DivineComedy published by Editions d’Art les Heures Claires.
BIBLIA SACRA
Dalí’s Biblia Sacra is the largest issued suite of the Spanish master’s work. The
portfolio was commissioned by leading patron Dr. Giuseppe Albaretto, who was
determined to redeem what he felt were Dalí’s wayward views by leading him back
towards the Catholic Church by using the Holy Bible. Subsequently, these exquisite
works illustrate Dali’s renewed ties to Christianity as well as his profound personal
spirituality.
Six years in the making, the Biblia Sacra contains 105 lithographs within five
illustrated volumes of the Holy Bible in Vulgate. The original illustrations were
completed between 1963 and 1964, with a combination of gouache, watercolor, ink
and pastel and published in 1967. Verses from the Old and New Testament of the
Holy Bible accompany each illustration.
The illustrations, fertile in both color and content, exemplify Dalí’s range of creativity
and artistic process. The wide variety of imagery employed by Dalí incorporates both
religious and historical images; some Christian and some based on classical
mythology. Additionally, Dalí’s exploration as an artist is evident in his use of
“bulletism,” a Dalínian invention where an arquebus (a type of antique gun) was
loaded with ink-filled capsules and then fired at blank sheets of paper. The resulting
patterns were then incorporated into the suite’s compositions. Dalí’s illustrations for
the bible are among the artist’s finest graphic works.
DIVINE COMEDY
In the early 1950’s Dalí was commissioned by the Italian government to create
illustrations of the text of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy in honor of the upcoming
septocentennial (700 year anniversary) of the poet’s birth.
Over nine years in the making, the works were completed in 1960 and subsequently published as a set of six volumes between 1960 and 1964 by Dalí’s close friend, French art publisher Joseph Foret, at Editions d’Art les Heaures Claires. The suite, comprised of 100 watercolors, contains incredible imagery ranging from the grotesque to the sublime as Dalí follows Dante from the deepest circles of Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory, and into heavenly Paradise. These works have been reproduced by the technique of wood engraving, engravers having carved 3,500 fruittree blocks for the prints– approximately 35 separate blocks were hand carved per print. Dalí himself thought this suite to be one of the most important of his career and it is considered by many today to be his most incredible and notable work. In all,three editions of Dante’s Divine Comedy were published: Italian, French and German, the rarest being the German edition.
According to the Official Catalog of the Graphic Works of Salvador Dalí, published by the Salvador Dalí Archives, only around 386, of the 1000 permitted, of the Divine Comedy German edition were ever completed.
Gallery owner Bryan Ledford says “this rare exhibition embodies our commitment to making museum qualityworks available to our collectors.”
December 11, 2007 – January 9, 2008 - William Bennett Gallery is proud to present The Spiritual Art of Salvador Dalí exhibiting for the first time in it’s entirety, the five-volume work of Salvador Dalí’s Biblia Sacra, featuring the complete 105 original lithographs, published in 1969 by Rizzoli Editions, Milan, Italy, and the complete six-volume, 100 woodblock prints of Dalí’s German edition of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy published by Editions d’Art les Heures Claires.
