Salvador Dalí

Private Collection, Europe

Albert Field, The Official Catalog of the Graphic Works of Salvador Dali, New York, 1996, no. 68-3B, the original intaglio is illustrated in color p. 39
Ralf Michler & Lutz W. Löpsinger, Dali, Catalogue Raisonné of etchings and mixed media Prints 1924-1980, Munich, 1995, the original intaglio is illustrated p. 160

Executed on thick cream wove paper. Edges of sheet are deckled. Scattered studio stains on verso and tape remnants at top and bottom left corners also on verso. Sheet is very slightly time darkened with a few minor stains and creases around extreme edges, but colors remain bright and fresh. Work is in excellent condition.
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With the sophisticated manipulation of form and imagery that distinguishes the artist's most successful compositions, Dahlia Unicornis presents a fantastical beast with the inimitable sense of mystery particular to Dalí's mature works. One of a series featuring surreal fusions of plant and animal characteristics, the unicorn plant featured in this work recalls the patchwork figures created in the “Exquisite Corpse” game of the early Surrealists. In the present work Dalí has employed an intricate and highly precise style of drawing to incorporate two distinct subjects within the heterogeneous whole of the composition.

This late point in Dalí’s career is characterized by the artist’s adoption of classical style, exploring the iconography of the old masters, whom he considered to be his peers, but continuing to embrace his own distinctive genius for subject matter. Elliott H. King observes of the artist’s late works: “Gradually, the chiaroscuro of myth, performance, commercialism, and self-promotion has begun to give way to a clearer view of Dalí’s intellectual and artistic vitality beyond his decade of association with the Surrealist group” (Elliott H. King, “Dali After 1940: From Surreal Classicism to Sublime Surrealism,” in Salvador Dalí: The Late Work, (exhibition catalogue) High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2010, p. 15).

The featured work also introduces Freudian aspects demonstrated in many of Dalí’s most famous works. The dahlia, with its classically painted petals and leaves, is fused with the life cycle of Dalí’s nightmare unicorns, born from the flower buds and dying exquisitely in the full beauty of the open flower. The stamen of the flower is replaced by the virile unicorn horns, unnaturally extended out of proportion with the horse heads. To reinforce the connections to sexual potency, the flower painting is laid over a drawing of a storybook princess being seduced by a full-bodied unicorn with his potency fully on display. But though the horse-bodied unicorn is in the height of his power, the dahlia-unicorn (or Dalí-unicorn?) is dead upon his blossoming. The eerie infusion of dreamscape with hyper-real figural elements is a hallmark of Dalí's approach. The voice which he gives to the subconscious world is at once personal and universal.

Executed in 1967, the present work provided the imagery for one work within a portfolio of ten etchings titled Flora Dalínae which Dalí created just one year later.