Provenance:
Private Collection, Northland
Purchased Bonhams, Knightsbridge, Modern Pictures London 20 May 2003, Lot 174 by current owner

Space Elephant revisits the Dalinian symbol created in 1946 when the artist painted The Temptation of St. Anthony. Dalí created the image of an elephant in the Egyptian desert carrying an obelisk on its back, a symbol of the progress of technology in the modern world. Four elephants stand on spider like legs offering beauty, power, pleasure and knowledge.

For this sculpture, based on the elephants in The Temptation of St. Anthony, Dalí maintains the almost invisible spindle like legs, emphasizing the contrast between robustness and fragility, and contrasting the idea of weightlessness with structure. This fantastically surreal creature, moving through space towards the heavens, symbolizes a flight of fantasy in a mesmerizing and surrealistic universe. Space Elephant, was designed and created in 1980, - the bronze casts were made in 1981.