Naturaleza muerta (Still Life)

The years Salvador Dalí spent at the Residencia de Estudiantes were a time of artistic experimentation shifting between Cubism, Italian metaphysical painting and 1920s new realisms. Naturaleza muerta (Still Life), also known as Sifón y botella de ron (Siphon and Bottle of Rum), is a prime example of the influence of metaphysical painters on the work of the young Dalí, which he encountered through the magazine Valori Plastici. For the architectural quality and geometry of the composition, the precision of the delineation and the delicate colour palette, the artist drew from figures such as Giorgio Morandi, Carlo Carrá and Giorgio de Chirico.

Dalí exhibited the painting at his first solo show at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona in 1925, and, in the same year, at the Primera Exposición de la Sociedad de Artistas Ibéricos (First Exhibition of the Society of Iberian Artists) in Madrid. He would subsequently gift it to Federico García Lorca, who hung it above his bed at the residence. As proof of their friendship, Lorca would respond in kind with Oda a Salvador Dalí (Ode to Salvador Dalí), published in 1926, in which the poet centres, first and foremost, on the purity he notes in the work and character of the young Dalí.



Raúl Martínez Arranz