Spectre du soir sur la plage (Nocturnal Spectre on the Beach), 1935

Painted in 1935.

In this powerful dreamscape Dalí depicts the beach near his native Figueres
in Catalonia. Dominated by the expanse of sand and a large sky with almost
anthropomorphic clouds, the composition conjures up memories of the landscape
in which the artist spent many summers of his childhood. Rendered with a
precision and finesse that Dalí owed to his admiration and study of European
old masters, the miniature figures accentuate the vastness and melancholic
atmosphere of the beach.

This eerie landscape, with its craggy rocks, sea and sand haunted the
artist’s subconscious mind, providing the setting for many of his most
important and groundbreaking compositions. The melancholic, disquieting
atmosphere of the present work reflects a strong affinity with the still,
deserted piazzas pioneered by Giorgio de Chirico in his metaphysical
paintings, which played an important role in the development of the
Surrealists’ imagery and sensibility.



In a lecture delivered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1934, Dalí
said of the themes that preoccupied his art during this time: “The
subconscious has a symbolic language that is truly a universal language for
it does not depend on education or culture or intelligence but speaks with
the vocabulary of the great vital constants, sexual instinct, sense of death,
physical notion of the enigma of space these vital constants are universally
echoed in every human being.” [1]

[1]
Salvador Dalí, quoted in Salvador Dalí, exh. cat. (Tate Gallery, 1980),
15–16.