A study of his Art-in-Jewels. The collection of the Owen Cheatham Foundation. - SIGNED WITH AN ORIGINAL DRAWING TO CUMMINS CATHERWOOD

Greenwich: New York Graphic Society. 1959. First Edition. Deluxe hard cover edition, 67 pp. with numerous tipped-in color plates, contained in a slipcase. This copy elaborately signed and inscribed across two pages "Pour Cummins con afecto / Hommage / de / Dali" with an extraordinary ink illustration of a crucifix, signed additionally four times. Together with a tipped-in card of Carlos Bernardo Alemany, the Argentinean jeweler craftsman who uniquely and personally hand produced all of the Salvador Dali jewelry. The card with various notations on the verso in an unknown hand, the book and case in fine condition throughout.


The first of Dali's jewelry designs were produced in 1941 and the first collection of 22 of these were acquired by the American millionaire Cummins Catherwood, to whom the present volume is inscribed. Dalí designed the pieces on paper, with all sorts of details and very precise shapes, materials and colours, while the actual making of the jewels was carried out in New York, under the attentive supervision of the artist, in the studio of Carlos Alemany, a gold/silversmith of Argentinian origin. In 1958 the jewels were acquired by the Owen Cheatham Foundation, a prestigious American foundation created in 1934, which would lend out the jewel collection so that various charitable, educational and cultural entities could collect funds by exhibiting it. Eventually deposited at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the collection was later sold a number of times before eventually being acquired by the Dali Foundation. The artist wrote that "in jewels, and in all my artistic activity, I create what I love most. In some of them one can discern an architectural meaning, as it also happens in some of my paintings. Once again, the logarithmic law is highlighted, as well as the interrelation between spirit and matter, between space and time." (11460)

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Signed Document/Item

Art & Design

• Sold