Salvador Dalì, The Acting, from the series The Arts, lito-screen printing, 70x50 cm

The Acting: serious-lithography by the surrealist master Salvador Dali. In the centre a draped curtain opens onto a theatre scene featuring two characters: one on the right kneels before a majestic elephant, ridden by another character. The elephant-beast is one of the most recurrent subjects in his production: it first appeared in the 1944 work Dream caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate just before waking up. The elephant was inspired by the pedestal of a sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in Rome: an elephant carrying an ancient obelisk is portrayed with the 'long legs of desire, with many joints and almost invisible'. Through the strange association of the legs, thin and fragile, and the pachydermic body of these clumsy animals Dali creates a sense of unreality. He himself explains the origin of this idea as follows: The elephant represents the distortion of space, the long, slender legs contrast the idea of weightlessness with the structure (....) I paint images that fill me with joy, that I create with absolute naturalness, without the slightest concern for aesthetics, I do things that inspire me with deep emotion and I try to paint them with honesty'. Always passionate about the theatrical world, Salvador Dali created several set designs over the years for plays such as García Lorca's Mariana Pineda (1927) and Wagner's Tannhäuser (1939).

The serial-lithograph is signed in the bottom right-hand corner and numbered in the bottom left-hand corner.