The ant, with its vaguely hourglass-shaped body, symbolizes disintegration but also a rigid acceptance of inevitability and the slow march of time. The approaching hour of high-noon is accentuated by the high Catalan sun casting long shadows on the varied objects and persons dotting in the idealized, but barren, landscape. The juxtaposition of blood and water on the band surrounding the pocketwatch combines two of the most basic building blocks of life, without which life cannot exist. It floats in the foreground, pulsing with blood and sinewy muscle, the clear focal point which draws the viewer inward toward the vanishing perspective of the work. A quintessential Dalinian character, not a still-life. Our “Soft Watch” is a living, breathing organism.

Salvador Dali (Spanish, 1904-1989) “Soft Watch” (Reloj Blando, 1975) (Study for Stillness of Time”, and original illustration for the lithographic series, “Time”, published by Levine & Levine (1976) Gouache, watercolor and oil on carton 50.8cm x 72.5cm (20 inches x 28.5 inches) Accompanied by the original certificate of authenticity from Nicolas Descharnes (2019) Literature: “The Vision of a Genius” (1998) Centro Arte Moderno de Oviedo, p. Therefore, we are honored to have just been able to locate and secure a work which is quintessentially Dalinian… “Soft Watch” (Reloj Blando- 1975) and offer it to our clientele. This work sold, then sold again a short time later for more than 2.5X the purchase price. In 2012, we worked on a project involving Dali’s “The Stillness of Time”, also from 1975, at just under $300,000. Rarely, if ever, do we locate “Soft Watches” on the open market. Salvador Dali “Profile of Time” (1977) Salvador Dali “Study for Soft Watch Exploding” (1954) Salvador Dali Museum, St.

The watches, the ants, and the landscape itself, each tell a story… A story which does not end with this work and is retold throughout the life and art of the master. According to Dali, the watches are “ nothing more than the soft, extravagant, solitary, paranoiac-critical Camembert cheese of space and time… Hard or soft, what difference does it make! As long as they tell time accurately.” Each element of the painting, when broken down into its symbolic parts, is significant to Dali and portrays a story of his own birth, life and death. Watches melt over linear, organic and amorphous shapes dotting the lunar landscape of Dali’s home city of Cadaques in Spain, simultaneously analogizing his past, present and the future.

The mere sight of a melted object is often enough to evoke thoughts of Spanish master Salvador Dali’s transcendent masterpiece “Persistence of Memory” (1931- Museum of Modern Art, New York) Salvador Dali “Persistence of Memory” (1931) Museum of Modern Art, New York. Scarcely in Art History does a symbol emerge which is more internationally recognized than the “Soft Watch”.

Melting clocks painting