Basket of Bread (1926)

One of the most popular works in the Dalí Museum Collection is The Basket of Bread. This work was completed in 1926 at the end of his formative years.  This super-realist oil painting was one of his first works to be seen in America at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh in 1928.  Dali's use of detailed illusionism, and dramatic lighting against an almost black background eludes the influence of the Spanish painter Grancesco de Zurbaran (1598-1664), particularly his 1633 work Still LIfe with Oranges.  This Spanish painter was a contemporary of Velazquez and was renowned for his work's austere piety and quiet beauty.  The classical quality is also similar to Vermeer's technique in Mistress adn Maid (1670), which also held sway over Dali's chosen style.  To prove his technical mastery, Dali returned to Basket of Bread subject in 1945 by painting a second version in Figueres. 

In 1926, Dali saw bread as the staple of life of the Catalan people.  Bread was the most basic element uniting Catalans in their daily lives, and he chose to approach it stylistically as Vermeer or Zurbaran would, rendering it a sublime symbol.  In time, bread would become a Dalinian fetish object, as we will see in his surrealist period.  In his early surrealist career, Dali created an unforgettable object by placing this loaf of bread on the head of a woman's bust (Retrospective Bust of a Woman, 1933).  He even appeared in New York in the 1950s carrying a 4 meter long loaf of bread as a publicity stunt.  In his later paintings, bread becomes a Eucharistic symbol, as seen in his painting Eucharistic Still-Life (1952).