As one of the leading members of the Surrealist group in the 1930s, Dalí never confined his artistic compositions to the limitations of the rational world, and often remarked that even he did not have the slightest idea what his own paintings meant.  The present drawing, however, combines various key characteristics of Dalí's most successful compositions, synthesizing what Juan Antonio Ramírez terms the "Four Mechanisms," namely Mutation; the Paranoic control over the perception; Morphological Echo; and Confusion of figures. 

After the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, Dalí sought refuge in the United States, where he arrived via Spain.  During his eight-year stay in America, Dalí's work was exhibited, not without controversy, at numerous museums and galleries, including his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (1941) as well as at the Julien Levy Gallery, Knoedler Gallery and the Dalzell Hatfield Gallery in Los Angeles.  Interestingly, some of his most compelling works from this period were the result of commissions that arose from his work on set designs for the Labyrinth at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, García Lorca's El Café de Chinitas, Colloque sentimental, Romeo and Juliet as well as Tristan Insane.  🔴The studies and paintings that culminated in the final set curtains are works in their own right that provide an insight into the psyche of Dalí as well as revealing the artist's genius as well as draftsmanship.

Like the works of Pieter Brueghel (Fig. 1) and Hieronymus Bosch, Dalí's oeuvre is visually charged with iconography associated with sexual themes, death and spirituality.  Like the Dutch Masters who inspired him, Dalí delights in locating his works in fantastical settings.  The present lot provides a plethora of imagery associated with works he ultimately produced during the 1940s.  The anthropomorphic tree (visible at top left and right) is a device that appeared on the cover of his first novel Hidden Faces (Fig. 2).  The swan also is a reference to his wife, Gala, as well as to Leda༺ and the swan, the classical symbol of heterosexual love.&𒐪nbsp;

Dalí's Catholic roots are also evidenced by the figure of Saint Jude wielding a Cross.  Additionally, the crutch is an attribute associated with God's protection and support.  Executed during the height of World War II, the present drawing has several motifs that represent death.  The skull, for instance, is a symbol that not only refers to man's fleeting presence on earth, but also raises existentialist questions posed in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

In the catalogue for the 1943 exhibition of his work at the Knoedler Gallery, Dalí wrote, "Since photography was invented, hundreds of thousands of hands, feet, faces, and leaves have been recorded and sometimes even with talent, nevertheless a hand, drawn by Monsieur Ingres with scrupulous objectivity, a foot sketched by Raphael di Urbino, a face or leaf traced by Leonardo da Vinci꧒ - remain and will remain more and more each day, the greatest and rarest miracle of the sensibility and intelligence of man.  For all my imitators, for all my detractors, and for all my polemicists, I have but one unique response, probably the most difficult to furnish today: a good drawing."

Fig. 1 Pieter Brueghel the Elder, La Paresse, 1557,  Vienna, The Albertina

Fig. 2  Salvador Dalí, Monumental Shield for Hidden Faces, Dial Press, New York, 1944