Your humble blogger's favorite Dali painting has long been "Santiago El Grande." But if asked which Dali canvas captures, better than any other, the overall essence of Dali's inspirations, techniques, and Catalan sensibilities, my answer keeps locking on one work: the immense and dazzlingly colorful "Hallucinogenic Toreador" (1970, Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida).
I recently stopped off at the museum again, en route to Sanibel Island, Florida, accompanied by my wife, who's seen in the left foreground here. I never tire of this remarkable picture -- maybe the best double-image ever depicted by Dali's sure brush.
On Dali's easel in Spain for at least a year, "Toreador" includes, of course, an apotheosis of the bullfight -- an iconic Spanish spectacle Dali attended with some regularity (while wife Gala deplored the "sport". I do, too, but that's another story).
The work also features, at lower left, a nod to Spanish Cubist painter Juan Gris, as well as the legend of St. Narciso, symbolized by the large flies.
It's no surprise that an entire book was written about the painting, translated, "All Dali in One Painting." It is quintessentially Spanish and quintessentially Dali!
(Images used based on fair use/journalistic purposes only, and not for commercial use.)
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