Artist: Salvador Dali (Spanish, 1904-1989)
Title: The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac – Aquarius
Date: 1967
Accession #: 2006.3.9
Medium: Color lithograph on Arches paper
Dimensions: sheet: 28 1/2 x 20 1/4 in., image: 25 1/4 x 18 1/16 in.
Gift of: Bob & Barbara Woodward
About the Artwork: Nicolas Sokoloff, author of the book The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac, which Salvador Dali illustrated in 1967, describes people of the Aquarius sign as being ahead of their time. Sokoloff writes, “His ideas, which are too new, too revolutionary, cannot be put into practice at the time when they are conceived and his contemporaries reject them.” Of the famous Aquarius’s, Sokoloff mentions Mozart, Boccherini, and Schubert, three famous musicians who exemplify what it means to be ahead of one’s time. Their passion for music and their desire to consistently try new things labels them as true Aquarius’s. (from: Sokoloff, Nicolas. The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac. Paris: Trois Anges, 1969. p. 54. Print.)