Why did Air India gift the surrealist painter Salvador Dali a baby elephant?

While the artist is not known to have visited India during his lifetime, his most celebrated connection with the country is a 1967 commission for Air India. He designed limited edition ashtrays for the airline and was remunerated with a baby elephant at his request.

The Air India commission

Known to be a prominent patron of art in post-independent India, Air India’s art collection or ‘The Maharaja Collection’ arguably began in 1956 with a Rs 87.50 purchase of a set of six watercolours by artist B Prabha. The national carrier added over 4,000 works to the collection over the years, including a Dali ashtray.

This resulted from a chance 1967 meeting between Air India’s then public relations officer Jot Singh and Dali in a New York hotel. Singh requested the surrealist create limited-edition souvenirs that could be gifted to the national carrier’s most valued clients. Dali agreed, and the ashtrays were born. While it is widely believed that 500 pieces of the ashtray were produced, the exact number is contested.

The ashtray design

The ashtray Salvador Dali designed for Air India. (Source – Air India First Flight Covers)

The design of the white unglazed porcelain ashtray was based on a 1937 Dali canvas titled Swans Reflecting Elephants, featuring a “double image” meant to create visual illusions. With its centre shaped like a shell, it was held up by three legs. The stands appeared as swans when the ashtray was sitting upside down, and an elephant with a serpent on the perimeter when placed right side up.

The serpent was arguably inspired by his muse Gala’s bracelet depicting a serpent, which she also wears in Galarina, his 1944 portrait of her.

The booklet that accompanies the ashtray states, “The reflection of an elephant’s head looks like a swan and the reflection of a swan appears to be an elephant. This is what I have done for the ashtray. The swan upside-down becomes an elephant’s head and the elephant inverted – a swan.”

The ashtrays were gifted to Air India patrons worldwide, including the former King of Spain Juan Carlos.

How Dali was compensated with an elephant

When asked about his remuneration, the flamboyant artist demanded an elephant. He reportedly told Air India officials, “I wish to keep him in my olive grove and watch the patterns of shadows the moonlight makes through the twigs on his back.”

The carrier obliged, flying a two-year-old elephant from Bangalore to Geneva with a mahout. After clearance through customs, the baby elephant was transported in a truck to Dali’s home in the coastal town of Cadaqués. An Indian astrologer was also flown from Mumbai to participate in the festivities to welcome the elephant. A special parade was held in the town plaza, and according to several accounts, the mayor of Cadaqués declared a three-day holiday to celebrate the arrival of the elephant.

While Dali had several plans for the elephant, including riding on its back across the Alps, he didn’t keep the elephant with him for long, later donating it to the Barcelona Zoo.

Argillet and the Delhi exhibition

A French art collector, photographer and publisher of original prints of several artists, including Dali, Hans Bellmer and Leonor Fini, Pierre Argillet shared close relationships within the art circle. A patron of surrealist, futurist and Dadaist art, he founded The Argillet Collection in 1958.

His collaboration with Dali lasted for over 30 years (till the mid ’70s) and saw the two work together on the production of numerous etchings, tapestries and porcelain plates, several of which are now part of The Argillet Collection.

The Delhi exhibition will see, among others, the series “The Songs of Maldoror”, a set of 50 prints, including eight reworked plates where Dalí depicted visions of his childhood traumas, and “Mythologie” that features etchings in the “hasard objectif” technique that draws from “symbolism of ancient Greek legends”.

If the etchings from the ‘Don Juan’ series reflect on “themes of seduction, love and death”, for the series ‘Faust’, Dali took inspiration from the eponymous classic by German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and used roulette, ruby, and diamond as etching tools.