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View of Cadaques with Shadow of Mount Pani
Date: 1917
Material Used: Oil on burlap
Size: 15 1/2 x 19 inches
A favorite place from Dali's childhood, Cadaqués is the picturesque Mediterranean village where his family had its summer home. It is also where Dali fell in love with painting. In 1919, a young Dali proclaimed in a letter: "I have had a wonderful time, as always, in this ideal and fantastic village of Cadaqués; there, at the side of the Latin sea, I have quenched my desire for light and color; I have spent the sultry summer days, painting like mad, trying to translate the incomparable beauty of the sea and sun-beaten shore."
Few works capture Dali's youthful enthusiasm for landscape painting better than View of Cadaqués. Created when the artist was just thirteen, this painting reveals both his love for the Mediterranean landscape, which appears throughout his career, and his enthusiasm for physically working with paint. Peering down on the village from the steep perspective of Mount Pani, Dali layers dabs of paint in a white arc to suggest the clustering of whitewashed buildings around the Bay of Cadaqués, transformed by a radiant pink sky. The shadow of Mount Pani is just about to reach the houses.
The work has an unusual texture because it is painted on rough burlap, the material fishermen used to keep their wooden boats moist. The Dali family home, unseen but located just to the left of the large pine, was on the beach where fishermen moored their fishing boats. Cape Creus, whose startling rock forms were a major influence on Dali's surreal paintings, appears at the top of the canvas just under the pink horizon.
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