Wailing Wall
Wailing Wall
Salvador Dali
Spanish, 1904 - 1989
Bronze with Silver Patina on Jerusalem Stone Base
14 x 11 1/2 x 3 in. (35.6 x 29.2 x 7.6 cm)
Signed lower left, Numbered 33/250
Inscribed to base Jerusalem Stone and further inscribed in Hebrew.
Dalí's relationship with Jewish history and the State of Israel was among the most earnest commitments of his late career. This bronze relief — conceived alongside the monumental Peace Menorah installed at Ben Gurion International Airport — depicts worshippers at the Western Wall, the holiest accessible site in Judaism and the last standing remnant of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
In Dalí's rendering, the wall itself becomes a Surrealist object: its ancient stones tower and tilt beyond natural scale, inscribed with words and symbols that dissolve into pure texture, while robed figures below approach in reverence and grief. The jagged, asymmetrical silhouette of the bronze — raw at the top edge as if broken from something larger — amplifies that tension between ruin and transcendence.
Dalí himself wrote of this body of work: "O you, people of Israel, chosen people, sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For your devotion to upholding traditions, for the joy with which you celebrate and sanctify your festivities, I created this 'Peace Menorah' and this painting of the 'Western Wall.'" The bronze translates that statement into permanent, tactile form.
Cast by the lost-wax process and mounted on its original Jerusalem Stone base — the stone itself drawn from the land the work commemorates — number 33 from an edition of 250 places this example firmly in the earliest tier of the run. A rare pairing of Surrealist mastery and genuine spiritual conviction from one of the twentieth century's most celebrated artists.
