Mae West's Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment

Prints and Drawings

1934–35

Salvador Dalí
Spanish, 1904-1989

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Salvador Dalí
Title: Mae West's Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment
Place: Spain (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1934–1935
Medium: Gouache with graphite, on commercially printed magazine page
Inscriptions: Inscribed recto, lower right: "Salvador Dali"
Dimensions: 28.3 × 17.8 cm (11 3/16 × 7 1/16 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Charles B. Goodspeed
Reference Number: 1949.517
Copyright: © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2018

“International Watercolorists,” Art News 36 (May 14, 1938), p. 12 (ill.), as Portrait of Mae West.
Albert R. Morse, Catalog of Works by Salvador Dalí in Public Museum Collections (Cleveland, 1956), pp. 42–43 (ill.), as Mae West, 1936–37.
Frank Getlein, “The Artist Looks at People: Portrait Show at The Art Institute of Chicago,” Art In America XLVI (Winter 1958–59), pp. 65–66 (ill.).
Franz Schulze, “Art News from Chicago,” Art News LVII (January 1959), p. 49 (ill.), as Mae West.
Fleur Cowles, Case of Dali (London, 1959), p. 219 and facing p. 305 (ill.), as Portrait of Mae West.
Salvador Dalí, Secret Life of Dalí, trans. By Haakon M Chevalier (New York, 1961), facing p. 279, pl. 12.
Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1961), p. 113.
Sarane Alexandrian, L’art surréaliste (Paris, 1969), pl. 98.
Albert R. Morse, Salvador Dalí: A Guide to His Works in Public Museums (Cleveland, 1974), p. 5 (ill.).
Robert Storr, “For Sale: The Elizabeth Goodspeed Chapman Collection,” The Connoisseur 206:82 (February 1981), p. 134 (ill.).
Jack Hobbs and Richard Salome, The Visual Experience (Worcester, Mass., 1991), p. 125, fig. 10-12.
“Si tu joues au Génie, tu le deviens,” Connaissance des Arts 501 (December 1993), p. 96 (ill.).
Dalí: Architecture, exh. cat. (Barcelona, 1996), pp. 97–98, fig. 40, as Mae West.
Haim Finkelstein, Salvador Dalí’s Art and Writing, 1927–1942 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 154, fig. 47, as Mae West.
Robert Descharnes and Gilles Néret, Salvador Dalí, 1904–1989: The Paintings, 1904–1946 (Cologne, 1997), pp. 244-45 and 754, no. 554 (color ill.).
Dawn Ades, Dali: The Centenary Retrospective, exh. cat. (London, 2004), p. 284, fig. 1.

The Art Institute of Chicago, “The Seventeenth International Exhibition of Water Colors, Pastels, Drawings and Monotypes”, April 28–May 30, 1938, cat. 127 (ill.), as Mae West.
Chicago, The Arts Club, “Salvador Dalí,” May 23–June 14, 1941, n.p., cat. 27, as Portrait of Mae West, n.d.
Winnetka, Ill., New Trier High School, April 23–May 19, 1952.
Highland Park, Ill., Highland Park Library, June 6–July 9, 1952.
Brussels, IXe Festival Belge d’Eté, “Savador Dalí,” July 1–September 10, 1956, pp. 8 (ill.) and 30, cat. 37 (ill.), as Mae West, 1935.
Chicago, The Arts Club, “Surrealism: Then and Now,” October 1–30, 1958, n.p., cat. 11 (ill.), as Mae West, c. 1934.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “The Artist Looks at People,” November 13, 1958–January 11, 1959, pp. 65–66 (ill.), no cat.
Philadelphia, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, “Improbable Furniture,” March 10–April 10, 1977, pp.6, 10, and 13, no. 2 (ill.), as Mae West, c. 1934; traveled to La Jolla, Calif., La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, May 20–July 6, 1977.
Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, “Salvador Dalí: retrospective 1920–1980,” December 18, 1979–April 21, 1980, pp. 274–75, cat. 208 (ill.).
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Modern and Contemporary Works on Paper,” March 24–September 13, 2009, no cat.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Salvador Dali: The Image Disappears”, February 18 - June 12, 2023.

Sold by the artist to Mrs. Charles Goodspeed (née Elizabeth Fuller, later Mrs. Gilbert Chapman; 1893–1980), Chicago, by 1938 [according to letter from Mrs. Goodspeed dated June 8, 1970 and Chicago 1938 exh. cat.]; given to the Art Institute, 1949.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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Mae West's Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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