By Reed V. Horth, for Robin Rile Fine Art. 

Scarcely in Art History does a symbol emerge which is more internationally recognized than the “Soft Watch”.  The mere sight of a melted object is often enough to evoke thoughts of Spanish master Salvador Dali’s transcendent masterpiece “Persistence of Memory” (1931- Museum of Modern Art, New York)

Salvador Dali “Persistence of Memory” (1931) Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Watches melt over linear, organic and amorphous shapes dotting the lunar landscape of Dali’s home city of Cadaques in Spain, simultaneously analogizing his past, present and the future. According to Dali, the watches are “nothing more than the soft, extravagant, solitary, paranoiac-critical Camembert cheese of space and time… Hard or soft, what difference does it make! As long as they tell time accurately.” Each element of the painting, when broken down into its symbolic parts, is significant to Dali and portrays a story of his own birth, life and death. The watches, the ants, and the landscape itself, each tell a story… A story which does not end with this work and is retold throughout the life and art of the master.

Salvador Dali “Profile of Time” (1977)

Salvador Dali “Study for Soft Watch Exploding” (1954) Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, FL USA

Rarely, if ever, do we locate “Soft Watches” on the open market. When we do, it is cause for celebration. In 2012, we worked on a project involving Dali’s “The Stillness of Time”, also from 1975, at just under $300,000. This work sold, then sold again a short time later for more than 2.5X the purchase price. Now, the work is offered for nearly $2M.

Therefore, we are honored to have just been able to locate and secure a work which is quintessentially Dalinian… “Soft Watch” (Reloj Blando- 1975) and offer it to our clientele.

Salvador Dali (Spanish, 1904-1989)

“Soft Watch” (Reloj Blando, 1975)

(Study for Stillness of Time”, and original illustration for the lithographic series, “Time”, published by Levine & Levine (1976)

Gouache, watercolor and oil on carton

50.8cm x 72.5cm (20 inches x 28.5 inches)

Accompanied by the original certificate of authenticity from Nicolas Descharnes (2019)

Literature: “The Vision of a Genius” (1998) Centro Arte Moderno de Oviedo, p. 225

PRICE ON REQUEST

Our “Soft Watch” is a living, breathing organism. A quintessential Dalinian character, not a still-life. It floats in the foreground, pulsing with blood and sinewy muscle, the clear focal point which draws the viewer inward toward the vanishing perspective of the work. The juxtaposition of blood and water on the band surrounding the pocketwatch combines two of the most basic building blocks of life, without which life cannot exist. The approaching hour of high-noon is accentuated by the high Catalan sun casting long shadows on the varied objects and persons dotting in the idealized, but barren, landscape.

The ant, with its vaguely hourglass-shaped body, symbolizes disintegration but also a rigid acceptance of inevitability and the slow march of time. The father and son in the background, two generations of family ties, discuss the Spanish people, as symbolized by the bean-shaped rock formation. “One could not imagine swallowing all that unconscious meat without the presence of some mealy and melancholy vegetable” Dali states. By this, he meant that the Spanish people stubbornly press on during times of hardship such as war, famine and strife. Although the bean is cracked and perched precariously atop the hills, it is strong and firm, a seedling for what is to come.

Dali signed the work with particularly robust, descending characters, “Salvador Dali, 1975”, rare for this time-frame, as he generally signed as merely “Dali” or in a rune, denoting his reverence for this particular painting.