Why did Air India gift the surrealist painter Salvador Dali a baby elephant?

While the creator is not known to person visited India during his lifetime, his astir celebrated transportation with the state is simply a 1967 committee for Air India. He designed constricted variation ashtrays for the hose and was remunerated with a babe elephant astatine his request.

The Air India commission

Known to beryllium a salient patron of creation successful post-independent India, Air India’s creation postulation oregon ‘The Maharaja Collection’ arguably began successful 1956 with a Rs 87.50 acquisition of a acceptable of six watercolours by creator B Prabha. The nationalist bearer added implicit 4,000 works to the postulation implicit the years, including a Dali ashtray.

This resulted from a accidental 1967 gathering betwixt Air India’s past nationalist relations serviceman Jot Singh and Dali successful a New York hotel. Singh requested the surrealist make limited-edition souvenirs that could beryllium talented to the nationalist carrier’s astir valued clients. Dali agreed, and the ashtrays were born. While it is wide believed that 500 pieces of the ashtray were produced, the nonstop fig is contested.

The ashtray design

The ashtray Salvador Dali designed for Air India. (Source – Air India First Flight Covers)

The plan of the achromatic unglazed porcelain ashtray was based connected a 1937 Dali canvas titled Swans Reflecting Elephants, featuring a “double image” meant to make ocular illusions. With its centre shaped similar a shell, it was held up by 3 legs. The stands appeared arsenic swans erstwhile the ashtray was sitting upside down, and an elephant with a serpent connected the perimeter erstwhile placed close broadside up.

The serpent was arguably inspired by his muse Gala’s bracelet depicting a serpent, which she besides wears successful Galarina, his 1944 representation of her.

The booklet that accompanies the ashtray states, “The reflection of an elephant’s caput looks similar a swan and the reflection of a swan appears to beryllium an elephant. This is what I person done for the ashtray. The swan upside-down becomes an elephant’s caput and the elephant inverted – a swan.”

The ashtrays were talented to Air India patrons worldwide, including the erstwhile King of Spain Juan Carlos.

How Dali was compensated with an elephant

When asked astir his remuneration, the flamboyant creator demanded an elephant. He reportedly told Air India officials, “I privation to support him successful my olive grove and ticker the patterns of shadows the moonlight makes done the twigs connected his back.”

The bearer obliged, flying a two-year-old elephant from Bangalore to Geneva with a mahout. After clearance done customs, the babe elephant was transported successful a motortruck to Dali’s location successful the coastal municipality of Cadaqués. An Indian astrologer was besides flown from Mumbai to enactment successful the festivities to invited the elephant. A peculiar parade was held successful the municipality plaza, and according to respective accounts, the politician of Cadaqués declared a three-day vacation to observe the accomplishment of the elephant.

While Dali had respective plans for the elephant, including riding connected its backmost crossed the Alps, helium didn’t support the elephant with him for long, aboriginal donating it to the Barcelona Zoo.

Argillet and the Delhi exhibition

A French creation collector, lensman and steadfast of archetypal prints of respective artists, including Dali, Hans Bellmer and Leonor Fini, Pierre Argillet shared adjacent relationships wrong the creation circle. A patron of surrealist, futurist and Dadaist art, helium founded The Argillet Collection successful 1958.

His collaboration with Dali lasted for implicit 30 years (till the mid ’70s) and saw the 2 enactment unneurotic connected the accumulation of galore etchings, tapestries and porcelain plates, respective of which are present portion of The Argillet Collection.

The Delhi accumulation volition see, among others, the bid “The Songs of Maldoror”, a acceptable of 50 prints, including 8 reworked plates wherever Dalí depicted visions of his puerility traumas, and “Mythologie” that features etchings successful the “hasard objectif” method that draws from “symbolism of past Greek legends”.

If the etchings from the ‘Don Juan’ bid bespeak connected “themes of seduction, emotion and death”, for the bid ‘Faust’, Dali took inspiration from the eponymous classical by German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and utilized roulette, ruby, and diamond arsenic etching tools.