Rezo Blando

Chinese ink on pink paper. Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity. A small drawing from the years of Dalí’s return to Catholic and classical motifs, following his wartime period in the United States. A kneeling figure raises one hand towards a framed canvas set on an easel, from which light radiates in the sharp rays Dalí borrowed from Baroque religious painting; on the canvas, the soft watch, his most recognisable motif, is rendered here as an object of veneration. The joke is the premise of the drawing and its title. A “soft prayer” is addressed not to an altarpiece but to the painter’s own invention — Dalí placing his own iconography on the easel, receiving the devotion that religious painting once commanded. The distant second figure, a few strokes wide, fixes the scale and pushes the horizon far back, a device from the deserted landscapes of the 1930s. The pink paper carries much of the effect. Working in black ink on a warm coloured ground, Dalí achieves the contrast of a print with the speed of a sketch — an economy characteristic of the drawings he produced in quantity through these years.