SALVADOR DALI (1904-1989) THE HORSE WITH THE SOFT WATCH Bronze with golden patina Signed "Dali" and numbered "41/350" with the founder's stamp "Fonderia Tesconi Pietrasanta". From an edition of 350 Marble base Bronze with golden patina; signed "Dali" and numbered "41/350" with foundry mark "Fonderia Tesconi Pietrasanta"; from an edition of 350; marble base HEIGHT 52 CM - 20 1/2 IN. BIBLIOGRAPHY Robert and Nicolas Descharnes, Dalí, the hard and the soft: spelles for the magic of form, sculptures and objects, Eccart, Azay-le-Rideau: 2003, reproduced as no. 650, p. 252 (a similar model). "For Dalí, the passage of time is halted by the very liquefaction that deforms his soft watches, which appeared as early as 1931 in a painting with the significant title Persistance de la mémoire (Persistence of Memory). One day," he says, "my soft watches will have to be wound again so that they give the time of absolute memory, which is the true and absolute time. (...) This fear of time running out (like an overdone Camembert) led him to praise the noodle style of art from the 1900s. Time must be allowed to distend, soften and flow, like a fluid, undifferentiated matter, where the before and after merge and penetrate into the moment. Such is the Breton approach of Nadja, whose adventure takes place in illo tempore, in a kind of time that is no longer the time of progress or work, but that of desire and the imaginary. The time of the sacred and the time of love." Jean-Paul Clébert, Dictionnaire du Surréalisme, Édition du Seuil, Paris: 1996, pp. 570-571.