Description:

Salvador Dali Signed Original Surrealistic Pencil Sketch of Turban He Commissioned at NYC Millinery Shop

An original pencil drawing by Spanish Surrealist artist Salvador Dali (1904-1989), signed by him as "Dali" at lower right. Dali's signature measures 3.875" x 2.25" alone. The artist has sketched a bust figure wearing a turban at the center, a single eyeball at lower left, and a trio of spiders near right center, under his dedicatory message in French "Pour An[n]e" ["For An[n]e"]. N.d., New York, New York. Expected wear to the paper including even toning and gentle wavering. Isolated discoloration from two pieces of old adhesive tape at top and bottom, and some partial pencil erasures near the top, else near fine. Displayed in a floating mount behind glass in an ebonized frame. Minor separation of the bottom two frame corners. The actual size of the drawing is 5.375" x 6.75" while the overall size of the frame is 12.625" x 14.75" x .375." Provenance: From a descendant of Anna Levy, the Manhattan milliner who was commissioned to create Dali's custom turban, and to whom Dali dedicated the original drawing.

The sketch was gifted to a great-nephew of Anna Levy. This descendant recalled: "The sketch is of a turban he [Salvador Dali] wanted made. My mother's aunt (Anna Levy) had a millinery shop on Madison Ave in NYC…The exclusive hats she sold were made in the back of the shop. Dali walked in off the street and asked if she could make him a turban. He made this sketch of what he wanted. My Aunt Anna asked him to sign it. He did. She made the turban for him…When she closed the shop on Madison Ave, my mother found the sketch in a drawer…"

Salvador Dali was one of the most important figures of the Surrealist movement, as equally known for his exuberant personality as for his evocative images. Over his 70+ year artistic career, Dali experimented in drawing, film, photography, sculpture, theater design, printmaking, furniture design, and fashion to express his off-kilter and imaginative ideas.

Dali, renowned as a fashionista, expressed himself notably through his clothing and accessories. His eccentric taste in dress, jewelry, headwear, and footwear was often on full and flamboyant display. Dali was known to wear voluminous kaftans, embroidered cowboy tunics, women's espadrilles, animal print coats, and 18th century inspired lace ruffled shirts, among the many showstopping pieces he was photographed wearing.

Dali's assortment of headgear was even more bizarre and ostentatious (see attached images of Dali donning various hats.) Dali is pictured wearing a white turban with a feathered spray while standing next to Malcolm Berreto, the French manager of Air-India, in 1967; Dali had been commissioned to design a limited edition elephant-form ashtray by the airline, and was perhaps inspired to wear a turban after contemplating his subject. In addition to the occasional turban, Dali sometimes wore a Catalonian style slouch hat, or barratina; a furred fez; a bread loaf-shaped hat; a rhinoceros horn; a deep sea diving helmet; a beating heart headdress; and a cow skull. With Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, Dali created the famous upside-down shoe hat in 1937-1938.

In addition to wearing turbans himself, Dali also depicted them in his artwork. Probably his best-known representation of a turban can be found in his 1939 oil on canvas, "Retrato de Gala con turbante" [trans: "Portrait of Gala with turban"]. Dali's wife Elena Ivanova Diakonovan (1894-1982) aka Gala Dali posed for the portrait now in the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain.

Very little information can be found about Anna's hat shop, "Anna's Hats of New York." Anna Levy is thought to have managed a storefront at 22 East 56th Street and Madison Avenue between the 1920s and at least the 1940s. One of the most interesting references to "Anna's Hats" is found in Lily Koppel's "The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal," a modern retelling of a journal kept by a teenage Jewish girl on the Upper West Side between 1929-1934. While researching her project, Koppel writes of inheriting "Boxes from Anna's Hats on East Fifty-sixth Street protect[ing] never-worn feathered confections with pins topped by a pearl" (The Red Leather Diary, p. 11)

"Anna's Hats" was located just steps away from Club Napoleon, a Prohibition-era speakeasy, and Bonwit Teller, the ritzy department store which moved into 721 5th Avenue in 1929 (now the location of Trump Tower). Dali designed two window displays for Bonwit Teller in 1939. Dali's displays entitled "Day" and "Night" featured many of the hallmark disconcerting flourishes of the Surrealist art movement, such as feathered mannequins, a four-poster bed with buffalo legs, and a bathtub lined in black lambskin. Dali's windows horrified Bonwit Teller shoppers to such an extent that the merchants toned down the displays. On March 15, 1939, an irate Dali jumped into one of his displays in protest and inadvertently crashed through the front window. It is unknown whether this happened before or after he visited the nearby millinery shop where he commissioned this turban; "Anna's Hats" was just a few blocks away.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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