Salvador Dalí

Memories of Surrealism - Space Elephant

Salvador Dalí’s Memories of Surrealism suite was published by Transworld Art. The total edition is 500, including sets in English and in French.

Each of the prints is a photo-lithograph (photolith) of an original mixed media artwork created using gouache and collage on paper.

Salvador Dalí created the Memories of Surrealism suite in 1971 in express reflections based upon his career to date.

Pierre Restany, a French art critic, interviewed Salvador Dalí about each of the Memories of Surrealism prints. The text appears out of order on printed introductory pages to accompany the photo-lithographs.

About Space Elephant, Restany recounts his interview with Dalí as follows. “In the text of picture 8 we refer to the famous stork leg. Now in order to make it legitimate and monumental I shall proceed to give it a shape; not the shape of a crutch but of a true stork leg in the legs of the famous Dalinian elephant. This can only be a true Triumphal Arch, since Boulle, the great cabinet maker of Louis XIV, had always thought that he should erect this elephant, which, thanks to Dali, will forever have stork legs, in the exact place of the present Arc de Triomphe in Paris, built from Chalgrin’s plans, dedicated on July 29, 1836, etc. (After a mile of prose on the Arc de Triomphe, full stop.)”