Original board by Salvador Dalì – “La prodigalità” Divine Comedy Purgatorio Canto XII (12).

Original board created using woodcut technique in color on BFK Rives paper. The board comes from the most important body of illustrative work ever made by the great Spanish master. One of 100 boards from the three canticles, Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.

Dalì took ten years - from 1950 to 1959 - to complete these boards, presenting them to the public in 1960 at the Palais Gallièra in Paris. The boards were made mainly using watercolor with additions in pen in an interpretation and reinvention of what the lines of the 'Divine Comedy' aroused in Dalí's visionary imagination. The result is shapes and colors that are both grotesque, irreverent, ironic, dramatic, sensual, ecstatic, allegorical and even graceful and sublime.

When discussing his woodcuts dedicated to The Divine Comedy, Salvador Dalí said "I wanted my illustrations for Dante to be like slight marks of moisture on a divine cheese. Hence their multicolored butterfly-winged appearance".

Subject of the Canto: In the I terrace. Examples of punished pride; warning to men. Encounter with the angel of humility. Ascent to the II terrace.

Size: 26 x 33 cm

Please note: The colors of the photographed artwork may differ from the display. The boards may show slight marks or stains due to the age of the paper. This detail does not in any way affect the value of the work.