From the “Florals (Surrealist Flowers)” series, 1972.

In 1972, Dali created the “Florals (Surrealist Flowers)” series where he would use illustrations by 19th-century botanists Pierre-Joseph Redouté and Pierre Antoine Poiteau as the basis for each work.

Dalí’s long-standing fascination with botanical evolution profoundly influenced his achievements as one of the great 20th-century masters of illusionism. For him, nature was a source of not only beauty, but also of his singular approach to visual transformation.

The artist’s fascination with botany can of course be traced to his Surrealist approach, in his Dalían attempt to explode the standard field of vision by leveraging dreams and metamorphosis. “I see the human form in trees, leaves, animals. I see animal and vegetal characteristics in humans,” he once said. “Human beings create and change. When they sleep, they change totally—into flowers, plants, trees.”

Dalí’s botanical series present a Surrealist collage to make a new phylum of beings, a new species of perception. Dalí presses the boundaries of what is imaginable and inspires new ways of seeing the world.

For Dali, the flower represents the feminine, sensual and life-giving aspect of life. The flower embodies the holistic processes of nature – from just a part of it to the entire whole.  For the artist, this embodies certainty. In contrast to the symbols more often used by Dali, which represent the unknown and the uncertain, the subconscious mind.  

In the Surrealistic Flowers collection, lips, eyes and other representations of life, sensuality and holistic vision are melded with the fundamental symbol of beauty and life — flowers, in rich color and three-dimensional texture (not visible in the photographs).

Literature: Field, 72-7.

Certificate of Authenticity (original in possession of owner)
Certificate of Authenticity of Group of Surrealistic Flowers