A Surreal Christmas
By Bronwyn May Johnston
When envisaging a tranquil Christmas landscape, alight with a warm winter glow and a gentle fall of snowdrops, surrealism’s violent delights and desires seem altogether at odds with a festive feeling of peace and cheer. A series of sketches however, by Salvador Dalí between 1946 – 1976, see the artist retire his explorations of inner angst in favour of beautiful Christmas scenes, imagined through a nuanced surrealist gaze.
In 1946 Dalí sketched an interplay of Christmas motifs captured within a barren landscape, for the cover of Vogue. The sparkling Christmas trees comprise the upper part of this double scene, a characteristic layout of Dalí’s compositions, under which female faces metamorphosise from the architectural structures upon which an image of the Angel Gabriel in the scene of the Annunciation is reflected.
Salvador Dalí, Christmas (Noel), 1946, Oil on wood, 36 x 25 cm. Study for cover of Vogue.
Later in 1958, Dalí revisited these festive motifs in a collection of greeting cards delivered to doctors and pharmacists across Spain, by the publishing company Hoeschts. In the artist’s card Felicitación de Navidad (1958), the Christmas tree occupies the central focus, negating the Catholic iconography traditionally found in Mediterranean visual culture, to alternatively appropriate imagery more commonly found in North America and Central Europe.
Salvador Dalí, Felicitación de Navidad, 1958. Greeting card for Hoeschts.
Dalí would go on to create a series of nineteen greeting cards for Hoeschts, annually re-imagining Christmas in varying surreal compositions, each year arguably more fantastical and outrageous than the last. In the artist’s final sketches, Christmas motifs are heavily abstracted, for example in the artist’s card of 1974, in which a blue Christmas tree adorned with a butterfly, appears surrounded by a sinuous swirl of forms suggestive of heralding angels.
Salvador Dalí, Felicitación de Navidad, 1974. Greeting card for Hoeschts.
Such sketches created by Dalí during these years, that infuse the antithetical sentiments of Christmas and surrealism, thus suggest that Christmas really can be a time when even the most unlikely of foes can come together.
Bibliography
ARTCHIVE, Christmas (Noel) (1946) by Salvador Dalí. Accessed December 16, 2024. https://www.artchive.com/artwork/christmas-noel-salvador-dali-1946/
Bender, Dr. Rebecca. Salvador Dalí’s Christmas Cards Are Better than Yours. Accessed December 16, 2024. https://rebeccambender.com/2013/12/23/dali-christmas-cards/