By Antoni Pitxot
Located in Sitges, Barcelona
Large Museum Scale Surrealist Composition Dalí Circle Catalan Painting 1987
Artist: Antoni Pitxot
Birth–death: Figueres, 1934–2015
Title: Battle of Constantine Series
Date: 1987
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 100 × 100 cm (39.4 × 39.4 in)
Signature: Signed and dated “pitxot 87” lower right
Condition: Excellent overall condition
Frame: Unframed
Provenance: Private collection, Barcelona
DESCRIPTION
Important large-scale surrealist oil painting executed in 1987 by Antoni Pitxot, one of the closest artistic collaborators of Salvador Dalí and a central figure within the visual universe of the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres.
This powerful 100 × 100 cm composition belongs to Pitxot’s Battle of Constantine series, one of the artist’s most ambitious narrative cycles. In this work, his unmistakable geological figuration becomes a theatrical surrealist battlefield, where mineral forms, latent human presences, fossil memory and Mediterranean landscape merge into a monumental symbolic construction.
Pitxot’s mature paintings are instantly recognizable for their transformation of stones into anthropomorphic figures and metaphysical architectures. Rather than depicting a conventional landscape, the artist creates a stage of petrified forms, suspended between archaeology, sculpture, mythology and dream imagery.
The work is especially strong for its museum-scale square format, its dramatic vertical construction and its direct connection with the Dalí circle. Large paintings by Pitxot with this level of compositional complexity are considerably less common than his smaller cabinet-format works and are particularly attractive for collectors of Spanish surrealism, Catalan modernism, European surrealism and artists connected to Salvador Dalí.
A major statement piece with exceptional wall presence, ideal for an important private collection, curated interior or collector focused on late twentieth-century European surrealism.
ARTIST BIO
Antoni Pitxot (Figueres, 1934 – Cadaqués, 2015) was a Catalan painter and one of the most significant artists associated with Salvador Dalí’s late artistic environment.
Born into the historic Pichot family, closely linked to the artistic life of Cadaqués, Pitxot studied drawing in San Sebastián under Juan Núñez, who had also been Dalí’s teacher. During the 1950s and early 1960s he exhibited in Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao and Lisbon before settling permanently in Cadaqués in 1966.
From that moment, he developed his mature and highly distinctive pictorial language based on the rock formations of Cap de Creus. Pitxot collected stones from the coast, arranged them in his studio as sculptural constructions, and then transformed them into oil paintings populated by anthropomorphic mineral figures.
His friendship and artistic collaboration with Salvador Dalí became central to his career. Dalí dedicated a permanent gallery to Pitxot’s work inside the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres. After Dalí’s death...
Category
1980s Surrealist Mary Spain Paintings
