About This Artwork

Salvador Dalí
Spanish, 1904–1989

Venus de Milo with Drawers, 1936

Painted plaster with metal pulls and mink pompons
38 5/8 x 12 3/4 x 13 3/8 in. (98 x 32.5 x 34 cm)

Through prior gift of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman, 2005.424

© Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York,
2013

Among Salvador Dalí’s many memorable works, perhaps none is more deeply embedded in the popular imagination than Venus de Milo with Drawers, a half-size plaster reproduction of the famous marble (130–120 B.C.; Musée du Louvre, Paris), altered with pompon-decorated drawers. The combination of cool painted plaster and silky mink tufts illustrates the Surrealist interest in uniting different elements to spark a new reality. Influenced by Sigmund Freud, Dalí first explored the idea of a cabinet transformed into a female figure, which he called an “anthropomorphic cabinet.” Venus de Milo with Drawers is the culmination of the artist’s investigations into the deep, psychological mysteries of sexual desire, symbolized in the figure of the ancient goddess of love.

— Permanent collection label

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Paris, 101 bis rue de la Tombe-Issoire, 19 June 1936.

Paris, 88 rue de l’Université, 2 February 1939.

Paris, Galerie du Dragon, Objet surréaliste 1931–1937, 20 October–20 December 1979, no. 10.

Paris, Musée du Louvre, D’après l’antique, 16 October 2000–15 January 2001, no. 259.

St. Petersburg, Florida, The Salvador Dali Museum, A Disarming Beauty. The Venus de Milo in 20th-Century Art, 28 April–9 September 2001, fig. 29.

London, Tate Modern, Surrealism: Desire Unbound, 20 September 2001–1 January 2002; traveled to: New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 6 February–12 May 2002, fig. 72.

Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Dalì, 12 September 2004–16 January 2005; traveled to: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 16 February–15 May 2005, cat. 156 (ill.),

Publication History

Robert Descharnes, The World of Salvador Dali (New York: 1962), p. 167.

William S. Rubin, Dada, Surrealism and Their Heritage (New York, 1968), p. 145, fig. 217.

Salvador Dali, exh. cat. (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), p. 30 (ill.).

Dalí parDalí (Montrouge, 1975), p. 73 (ill.)

Galerie du Dragon, L’Objet surréaliste 1931–1937 (Paris, 1979), no. 10 (ill.).

Simon Wilson, “Salvador Dali,” Salvador Dali, exh. cat. (London, 1980), p. 17.

Picasso/Miró/Dalí: Evocations d’Espagne (Madrid, 1985), no. 23, p. 230 (ill.).

Carlton Lake, In Quest of Dali (New York, 1990), pp. 72-74.

Franco Passioni, “Dalí dans la troisième dimension,” Salvador Dalí: Illustrateur et Sculpteur, exh. cat. (Geneva, 1992), p. 93.

Robert Descharnes and Gilles Néret, Salvador Dalí, 1904–1989, vol. I: Das malerische Werk, (Cologne, 1993), p. 279, no. 628 (ill.).

Marco di Capua, Dalí (New York, 1994)

Robert Descharnes, “Dalì, la Vénus de Milo, et la persistence de la mémoire antique,” D’après l’antique (Paris, 2000), pp. 462–65 (ill.).

William Jeffett, “An Obscure Object of Desire: The Venus de Milo, Surrealism and Beyond,” Disarming Beauty: The Venus de Milo in 20th-Century Art (St. Petersburg, Florida, 2001), pp. 61-67, 83, fig. 29.

Jennifer Mundy, ed., Surrealism: Desire Unbound (Princeton, New Jersey, 2001), p. 97 (ill. only).

Robert and Nicolas Descharnes, Dalí: Le dur et le mou, Sortilège et magie des formes (Paris, 2003), no. 61, pp. 32-33 (ill.).

Dalí, exh. cat. (New York, 2004), pp.258–59, no. 156 (ill.).

Bruce Boucher, "Notable Acquisitions at the Art Institute of Chicago," Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 32, no. 1 (2006), p. 64, ill. p. 65.

Charles Stuckey, “Dalì in Duchamp-Land,” Art In America (May 2005), pp. 153–54, ill.

Ownership History

Salvador Dalí, Paris, 1936–c. 1964; sold to Max Clarac-Sérou, Paris, c. 1964–1990; sold to Patrick Derom, Brussels, c. 1990.




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