Salvador Dali (1904-1989) Rare Sculpture "the Surrealist Eyes"

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) rare large silvered bronze sculpture, signed by the artist and bearing the Venturi Arte foundry mark, numbered 282/999 and dated 1980, with the inscription Dalart NV, publisher. This model is listed on page 228 of the book "Dalí, Sculptures et Objets" written and illustrated by Descharnes, published by Eccart Paris (please specify in the reference; two copies were sold at auction for €9,500 and €8,200 excluding fees). This sculpture originated from a conceptual architectural project created as a tribute to the famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí—note the graphic similarities between the sculpture and the Gaudí architecture of the façades of Casa Batlló and Casa Milà in Barcelona. This sculpture perfectly embodies Dalí's unbridled dreamlike quality, composed of a multitude of captivating blue-green eyes with an intense gaze, transposed into bronze. The artist titled it in Spanish La Gaudiniana Casa De Los Ojos (The Gaudí House of Eyes), thus paying homage to Gaudí, for whom he declared: "I defend the sublime genius of Gaudí against the Protestant vision of Le Corbusier." The work is in good overall condition and can be electrified. Dimensions: 35 cm high x 28 cm wide x 12 cm deep. From the beginning of his career, Salvador Dalí adopted the motif of the eye as a highly symbolic theme, and "The Surrealist Eyes" presents a delightful treatment of it in this sculpture. "What we see in things is not in things, but in the depths of our soul," declared Salvador Dalí. For the Spanish artist, the eye is a motif and a symbol in his work, which he has adopted recurrently since the mid-20th century, as seen in one of his most famous paintings, "The Eye," belonging to a series commissioned by Alfred Hitchcock for his film Spellbound, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, in reference to The Interpretation of Dreams, a major work by Sigmund Freud.