- Lot 239

Salvador DALI (1904-1989) The condottiere or warrior's head, circa 1975 Proof in bronze with chocolate brown patina signed and numbered 4/4, illegible stamp of the publisher DIEJASA. H : 21 cm Black marble base with white veins from Belgium. A historical piece which refers to the work of all these great armourers like the NEGRONI family of Milan who made great helmets. Dali made many drawings of these helmets and even in 1943 he made a copy in ink of Leonardo da Vinci's drawing which is preserved in the British Museum but the lower part of the sculpture without any trace on the face is exactly the David of Donatello (1383-1466), first monumental bronze realized after the Antiquity. A certificate from Nicolas and Olivier DESCHARNES will be given to the buyer. Bibliography : Robert Nicolas DESCHARNES. Le dur et le mou (Eccart). reproduced on page 167 under the number 420. The Clot collection The condottiere is part of the Clot Collection, a suite of 44 statues made by Dali between 1969 and 1979 for his friend and Catalan collector Isidro Clot. Dali's sculpture proceeds above all from architecture, it is necessary to organize a complex of morphology and to put it in space. The Clot collection has this immense particularity to cover many centuries. It is inspired by his frequent visits to the Louvre and his many trips to Italy, from mythology to old Sicily, as two of the pieces we will present here, but also by the greatest artists of the Renaissance like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, etc. In the middle of the 1930s, Salvador Dali initiated his first trip to Italy, which he continued until 1939: it can be said that he was captivated for the rest of his life by the magnificence and depth of Italian art. This fusion of Surrealism, Italian art and mythology would remain with him until his death. The Clot collection is probably the clearest and greatest example of this Italian mythological and Renaissance inspiration. This suite is very rare because of its limited edition of 4 copies.