ORIG Salvador Dali Woodblock Print of Dante’s Divine Comedy #17 of Inferno yqz

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Welcome to EstateAuctionsInc! We are one of the Top Sellers of Antiques, Collectibles and Quirky items on eBay. We have been selling since 1998 and ALL of our auctions start at .99 cents. We are proud to announce that we maintain a "FIVE STAR Detailed Seller Rating"and our staff strives for 100% customer satisfaction, our 100% feedback rating will vouch for that. We work with consigners from Coast-To-Coast and work hard to make sure we have top quality items. We are "Your Quality Zone" - search "YQZ" to see our other listings our ! _______________________________________________________________________ >>>>> UP IN THIS AUCTION <<<<< ORIG Salvador Dali Woodblock Print of Dante’s Divine Comedy #17 of Inferno German Edition (Only 386± Sets Completed) Block Signed - DESCRIPTION - Please be patient there are 12 photos to be loaded in this auction. We are so excited, in our possession is Salvador Dali’s complete set of 100 woodblock prints of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Each woodblock has a block signature in the image area and are matted in a paper sleeve. That would make this the “German Edition” of this set. They were published by Les Heures Claires in France. There is a BFK Rives watermark on two out of every four prints. The watermarks appeared only twice per sheet of four woodcuts, two out of every four are without a watermark. The woodcuts can be either forward or backwards and can be viewed by placing the print between you and a light source. The watermark will be visible along the lower edge if there. There were approx. 386 German editions completed. (There were two other editions printed, the French Edition and the Italian edition, neither one of those were matted nor completely signed with the block signature in every woodblock.) That makes these the rarest of all the Divine Comedy sets out there. The consignor has requested that we split the set up and allow them to be sold individually, thus allowing the average person the chance to own a part of art history. We are doing so over the month of March in what we are calling, “The 30 Days of Dali”. The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, divided into three parts: The Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church. This auction is for the seventeenth from the first part, Inferno. Titled, “Canto 17: The Usurers." It measures approx. 9 5/8” x 13” for the print sheet, the bottom edge deckled, matted in a sleeve that measures approx. 13” x 17” with the right edges deckled. The following is excerpted from Eleanor M. Hight "Dali and Dante: The Quest for Life's Meaning" and widely quoted on the internet. In the early 1950s, shortly before the septecentennial of Dante's birth, Dali was invited by the Italian government to produce a series of illustrations for a deluxe edition of The Divine Comedy to be published by La Libreria dello Stato in Rome. Between 1951 and 1960 Dali created a series of 101 watercolors for the book, which was unhappily never completely realized in its textural form. The watercolors were exhibited at the Palazzo Pallavici in Rome. However, the reception of Dali's project in Italy was extremely negative, since it did not seem appropriate for a Spanish (rather than Italian) painter, much less an irreverent Surrealist and sometime fascist sympathizer, to illustrate a commemorative edition of the greatest Italian poet's masterpiece to be published by the State Press. Although the project was dropped in Italy, Dali strove to see its completion. In the late 1950s Dali met the French publisher, Joseph Foret, who had issue Dali's series of lithographs for Cervantes's Don Quixote in 1957-1958. After viewing a group of the watercolors for The Divine Comedy at Dali's studio, Foret enthusiastically set out to find sup... read more

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