Thomas Levy, Hamburg
Pacific Heights Gallery, San Francisco
Acquired from the above circa 1985

Hamburg, Sammlung Levy, Salvador Dalí, Bilder, Gouachen, Zeichnungen, Sklupturen, 1977-78, no. 65, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Executed on cream wove paper. Attached to a mat at the top two corners on the verso. There is some paint shrinkage to the thickest pigments. Right edge has been cut and the top, bottom, and left edges are deckled. There is a thin soft crease along the bottom edges. Sheet is is slightly undulated. There is a thin piece of tape on the extreme left edge a few inches below the upper left corner. A collage butterfly to the left of the center of the composition is lifting slightly from the support. Overall the work is in excellent condition.
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Executed in 1969, the present work provided the imagery for an eponymous lithograph in Dalí 's 6-part Butterfly Suite created for the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer (see fig. 1). At the time L'Auvergne was created, Dalí had seceded from the Surrealist genre that defined his earlier years and began exploring other stylistic trends of the time. Dawn Ades has written about this post-war period and how Dalí began: "Linking the manifestations of Pop Art, optically illusionistic painting, photographic hyperrealism, Divisionism, Abstract Expressionism, stereoscopy and holography, all of which make their appearance in his post-war work, in the realm of realism, although this could be subdivided into the pursuit of pictorial and scientific realities" (Dawn Ades, Dalí, London, 1988, p. 173).

In the present work Dalí manifests his interest in a "realm of realism," or more specifically "scienti🃏fic realties" by depicting the butterflies as specimens. He carefully mounts each as if they were scientific studies. ꦆFurthermore, the energetic mark-making in the upper quadrants suggest his increasing interest in Abstract Expressionism, and the mixed media of the composition truly signifies Pop Art. All of these techniques exemplify Dalí's fervor and experimental attitude towards the new, post-war approach of artistic creation.

Fig. 1 The eponymous lithograph from the 6-part Butterfly Suite for the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer (the French Railways)