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Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages)

Artwork Details

Title
Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages)
Other Title
The Three Ages

Maker
Salvador Dalí
Date Made
1940
Materials
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Image: 19 5/8 in x 25 5/8 in
Accession ID Number
2000.14
Credit Line
Collection of The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL (USA); Gift of A. Reynolds & Eleanor Morse 2000.14
Location
ON VIEW
Copyright
In the USA ©Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc. St. Petersburg, FL 2022 / Worldwide rights ©Salvador Dalí. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí (Artists Rights Society), 2022; Photo © David Deranian, 2021

Supplemental material

Description

Dalí uses double images derived from his paranoiac-critical method to create the allegorical faces of "Old Age, Adolescence, and Infancy." It is through this process Dalí developed these complex, double images used to undermine the irrational world of the image by making it more believable than the viewer’s real world.

In the "Three Ages," glimpses of Port Lligat are seen through the apertures where illusions of faces now appear. These openings were suggested to Dalí by arches of local ruins. On the left, the bowed head of the woman from Millet's "Angelus" makes up the eye of "Old Age;" the hole in the brick wall forms her head's outline, and the rest of the figure forms the nose and mouth. The nose and mouth of "Adolescence," the figure in the center, is created from the head and scarf of Dalí's nurse sitting on the ground with her back to us. The eyes emerge from the isolated houses seen in the hills across the Bay of Cadaqués. On the right, a fisherwoman repairing a net makes the barely formed face of "Infancy."

Exhibition History:
1941, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, “Salvador Dalí”
1941, Chicago, The Arts Club of Chicago, “Salvador Dali”
1941, New York, Julien Levy Gallery, “Salvador Dalí”
1941, Los Angeles, Dalzell Hatfield Galleries, “Salvador Dalí”
1942, Indianapolis, The John Herron Art Institute (Indianapolis Museum of Art), [Exhibition of paintings by Salvador Dali]
1942, San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, “An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Dalí”
1943, Williamsburg, College of William and Mary, “An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Dalí”
1943, Utica, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, “An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Dalí”
1943, Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, “An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Dalí”
1943, Omaha, Josly Art Museum, “An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Dalí”
1965, New York, Gallery of Modern Art, “Salvador Dalí, 1910-1965”
2000, St. Petersburg, Florida, The Salvador Dalí Museum, “James Rosenquist: Paintings”
2006, Tokyo, Ueno Royal Museum, “Dalí Centennial Retrospective”
2009, Paris, Grand Palais, “The Double Image”
2010, Milan, Palazzo Reale, “Salvador Dalí, il sogno si avvicina(The Dream is Getting Closer)”
2015, San Francisco, Walt Disney Family Museum, "Disney and Dali: Architects of the Imagination"
2016, St. Petersburg, Salvador Dali Museum, "Disney and Dali: Architects of the Imagination"
2018, St. Petersburg, The Dalí Museum, "Magritte and Dalí"
2019, Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, "Magritte and Dalí"

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