Executed in 1939. Nicolas Descharnes and Olivier Descharnes have confirmed the authenticity of this work.

In 1937, Dalí signed on to collaborate with the choreographer Léonide Massine and his closest friend, couturière Coco Chanel, on Bacchanale—a Surrealist ballet produced for the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo. Originally conceived with a London opening, the outbreak of World War II upended those plans. Subsequently the production was relocated to the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, where it premiered on November 9, 1939. The ballet marked Dalí’s first major theatrical commission and signaled a decisive expansion of Surrealism onto the stage.

Executed in ink and heightened with white gouache, the present work balances meticulous draftsmanship with luminous accents suggestive of theatrical lights. At the upper right, an elongated, winged, biomorphic figure unfurls in a sweeping arc, its attenuated arm and feathered contours evoking both dancer and swan. Below, a cluster of diminutive, tutu-clad dancers appears in vignetted silhouette, grounding the fantastical invention in the familiar lexicon of classical ballet.

“Coco was like a white swan,” Dalí described Chanel in his autobiography. “Her thoughtful brow slightly bowed, moving forward on the water of history which was beginning to flood everything, with the unique elegance and grace of French intelligence” [1]. Study for Scenography and Costume for the Ballet Bacchanale elegantly alludes to Dalí’s perception of Coco Chanel as swan-like, transforming costume into creature and couture into myth. Both refined and hallucinatory, the present study reveals how Dalí conceived the ballet stage as a living Surrealist tableau—one in which fashion, choreography, and dream imagery converged in ecstatic transformation.

[1] S. Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, New York, 1993, p. 392.