Salvador DALI

Despite Dali’s immense aura, his works have never been woven in the National Manufactures and, although the mechanically woven versions of his paintings are indeed (too?) numerous, the handwoven Aubusson tapestries of his works are extremely rare : only the Picaud and Jean Laurent workshops were privileged enough to produce them. It was Pierre Argillet who was their instigator. A close associate of the surrealists and particularly Dali, he put together a wonderful collection which he installed in the château at Vaux-le-Pénil in the department of Seine et Marne, where he opened his museum of Surrealism at the same period that Dali inaugurated his museum in Figueras (Teatro-museu Dali) : they agreed at the time to commission tapestries of earlier works of the artist to decorate the galeries of both locations.

Hence « la girafe en feu » is the transposition of one of the 7 engravings of the series entitled « Tauromachie surréaliste » produced by Argillet in 1966 and was intended as a bridge connecting Picasso’s “ tauromaquia” and Dali’s surrealist inspiration (the flaming giraffe had been a recurrent trope since the 1930’s). From a technical point of view, the transfer from one medium to the other is visible proof of the highly skilled artistry of which the weavers had become masters since the tapestry renaissance of the 20^th century.