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oil on canvas, signed and dated 1934 Sotheby's, New York. A mutual friend, the French writer Julien Green introduced Aubrey Janion, the first owner of this work, to Dali, in the summer of 1933. Green had established a group of 12 friends of Dali known as the Zodiac Group to support the artist and his wife. Each member would financially support Dali for one month for which he or she would receive a painting. Janion became a member in 1934 and when asked by Dali to choose a painting, he replied that being an «old cavalry soldier» he would like a horse. In the 1930's Dali worked extensively with the theme of a sparse landscape populated by a few small figures. After seeing the work of Yves Tanguy in the late 1920's he adopted the latter's empty landscapes for his own efforts to transcribe dreams into painting. Instead of Tanguy's abstract shapes, however Dali painted concrete figures in his attempt to communicate the twists and turns reality undergoes in the course of a dream. The streak of bright orange may be a sliver of light escaping from the moon's shadow. This magic light bathes the horse in light as the horse bursts into flower. The dark cypress tree with its ominous pole and hanging cloth serve as a stark contrast, the shadow to the horse's light, the sense of darkness that almost always accompanies the irrational in Dali's work. Still this bid was rather disappointing compared with the pre-sale estimate of $ 600,000-800,000. During the same sale, Dali's «Etude de Costume», dated 1941, an oil on canvas measuring 46 x 33 cm, sold for $ 398,500 against a pre-sale estimate of $ 100,000-150,000. It represented a naked woman in a landscape supported by strange sticks but was painted in a rather rough way compared with the previous much achieved work. Sotheby's also sold Dali's painting in which he represented himself naked contemplating regular forms in the middle of which appears Leonardo's Leda with the face of Gala, his wife. This 61 x 45.7 cm work fetched $ 717,500 (Inclusive of buyer premium) against a pre-sale estimate of $ 700,000 to 900,000. |
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