Desnudo (Nude)

Salvador Dalí

Figueras, Girona, Spain, 1904 - 1989
  • Date: 
    1924 (circa)
  • Technique: 
    Oil on cardboard
  • Dimensions: 
    46 x 48,5 cm
  • Category: 
    Painting
  • Entry date: 
    2003
  • Register number: 
    DE01566

Desnudo (Nude) was originally part of one sole work and was joined with another of the paintings included in this exhibition, the piece entitled Desnudo en el agua (Nude in the Water, c. 1924, DE01567), with one placed on the front and the other on the back of the same support. The Museo Reina Sofía restorers chose to separate them to ensure better conservation for both. Due to both the posture taken by the model, who bends and tucks in her legs to hide her sex, and her appearance surrounded by different coloured cloths, this nude could be included in the feminine anatomy pieces Dalí painted from his time studying at the Academia Libre, founded in Madrid by Julio Moisés, and the place where the painter from Figueres would take classes with Benjamín Palencia, Francisco Bores, Maruja Mallo and José Moreno Villa, to name but a few. This representation of the female body, engaging, from a stylistic point of view, with the premises advocated by the European movement known as “return to order”, is one of the first compositions in the nude series the painter produced over the course of his artistic career – compositions of which Bañistas de Es Llaner (Bathers of Es Llaner, 1923, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres) became the most well-known from this early phase. Dalí would later work on other nude pieces, primarily inspired by the physiognomy of his wife, Gala, for instance in the popular One Second Before the Awakening from a Dream Provoked by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate (c. 1944, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) and My Wife Nude Contemplating Her Own Flesh Becoming Stairs, Three Vertebrae of a Column, Sky and Architecture (1945, Private Collection).

Paloma Esteban Leal

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