Qu Art
745 Chaussée de Waterloo
1180 Brussels
Belgium
Phone: + 32 2 644 91 76
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Qu Art has specialized in commission works in cooperation with artists and private and public buyers
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Plaza Dali
Artistic concept
At the end of the spring 1985, the city of Madrid offered to dedicate a plaza to Dali that would carry his name and where he would erect a monument of his choice. Dali designed the project of the plaza,with a Dolmen in its center. The future Dolmen de Dali would stand in front of the Sports Palace that replaced the former Plaza de Toros in the Salamanca barrio de Madrid, at the intersection of Felipe II Avenida and Calle Antonia Marcé.
For Dali, « the Dolmen will be an homage to the first architects of humanity ».
Its production was entrusted to François Pougeohl and the plaza was inaugurated on July 7 1986, under supervision of Dali himself. The plaza, the three pillars Dolmen, the Newton de Gala are its epicenter.
The statue of Newton is the adaptation of the character of the 1932 painting Phosphène de Laporte, an homage to the Italian physician Della Porta, who discovered the “dark chamber”. He was painted standing amidst a semi-desert.
Dali was enthusiastic about Newton who discovered the doctrine of universal attraction and astronomical phenomena, tides and equinoxes…
“Now remember that the gravity of the earth was already in the apple that was held in the hand of Eve, like a veritable Damocles sword suspended over the human species. Don’t doubt that this apple of Eve is the same one that, by falling on Newton’s forehead, permitted him to discover the physical law of force of the same gravity”
Salvador Dali, “50 Secrets of Magic Craftmanship”,1948.
Work’s description
The Dolmen
The top table of the dolmen, an oblong-formed uncut irregular monolith, 13,13 meters long, came from the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid, in a similar granite to that used in the palace of Escorial and according to Dali’s own specifications.
The Newton
The bodylines of the mathematician and physician are ridges and curves that allow shadow and light to create vivid energy in the sculpture.
The Newton de Gala is a variant of the sculpture Homage to Newton, from 1969.
On a cube of pure black granite, a man stands naked, holding a ball with a wire. It is “Newton, Dali’s homage to the discovery of the Theory of Gravitation”.
The statue measures 3,08 x 2,10 x 1,33 meters. The bronze pedestal measures 0,80 x 1,20 x 1,33 meters. The whole alloy of bronze and silicone weighs close to 700 kilos. A scan produced a “working model” of 70cm and several copies in plaster and wax were produced so Dali could intervene before the final production.
