Dali's letter to Federico García Lorca
Dali and Garcia Lorca exchange thoughts on the meaning of their art.
At college in 1923, Dalí met and grew close to the poet Federico García Lorca, and for some time they wrote to each other on a whole host of subjects. It is no surprise to learn that Dalí’s letters are like nothing written before.
Written between 1925 and 1936, the letters and lectures bring to life a passionate friendship marked by a thoughtful dialogue on aesthetics and the constant interaction between poetry and painting. From their student days in Madrid's Residencia de Estudiantes, where the two waged war against cultural “putrefaction” and mocked the sacred cows of Spanish art, Dali and Garcia Lorca exchanged thoughts on the act of creation, modernity, and the meaning of their art.
“Federico,
I’m working on paintings that make me die for joy, I’m creating in a purely natural way, without the slightest artistic worry, and finding things that move me deeply, and trying to paint honestly, that is, exactly. In that sense I’m beginning to completely understand the senses. Sometimes I think I’ve recovered – with unsuspected intensity – the “illusions” and joys of my childhood. I feel a great love for grass, thorns in the palm of the hand, ears red against the sun, and the little feathers of bottles. Not only does all this delight me, but also the grapevines and the donkeys that crowd the sky. Just now I’m painting a very beautiful smiling woman, bristling with feathers of every color, held up by a small marble dice that is on fire. The marble dice is supported, in turn, on a quiet, humble little plume of smoke. In the sky are donkeys with parrot heads, grass and sand from the beach, all about to explode, all clean, incredibly objective, and the scene is awash in an indescribable blue, the green, the red and yellow of a parrot, an edible white, the metallic white of a stray breast (you know that there are also “stray breasts,” just the opposite of the flying breast, for the stray one is at peace without knowing what to do and is so defenseless it moves me).
Stray breasts (how beautiful!) After this, I’m thinking of painting a nightingale. It will be titled NIGHTINGALE and it will be a feathered vegetal donkey in the woodsy canopy of a sky bristling with nettles, etc. etc. Helle, dear sir! Yessirree, you must be rich. If I were with you I would be your whore to cajole you and steal peseta notes to dip in donkey piss . . . I’m tempted to send you a piece of my lobster-colored pajamas, or better yet, “lobster-dream-colored” pajamas, to see if you are moved, in your opulence, to send me money [. . .] Anyway, just think, with a little money, with 500 pesetas, we could bring out an issue of the ANTI-ARTISTIC magazine and shit on everyone and everything from the Orfeo Catalán to Juan Ramón. (Give Margarita a kiss on the tip of her nose, the whole thing is like a nest of anaesthetized wasps.)
Farewell, Sir,
A kiss on the palmtree from your
ROTTING DONKEY”
Source:
Book: Sebastion’s Arrow: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca
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