Dalí: All his faces

He was eccentric, troublemaker and uneasy, but above all this and without a doubt, a genius. The exhibition of Dalí in the Museo Reina Sofía is the art world event of this season and it will make people talk as it seeks to demolish the myths that surround the artist.

“I myself am Surrealism” retorted Salvador Dalí, when in 1939 he was expelled from his group of surrealist artists – founded by André Breton, who coined the anagram “Avida Dollars” for Dalí. The Spanish painter seemed not to belong to the idealism shared by his French colleagues, who were annoyed by the famous passion for money Dalí had. 

After this, he devoted himself to what would be his big contribution to Surrealism: the Paranoid-critical method, where the creative process was explained through scientific discourses.  Dalí was fascinated by Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and his dreams began to be the subject of his artworks, in which he aspired to capture the plans of his subconscious; but he was also interested in science, particularly in Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum physics theory and in nuclear energy, with which the painter had an idyll towards the end of the nineteen forties. Dalí knew all the scientific novelties and he applied them to his painting knowledge: Atomic Leda (1949) is one of the best examples of how he used Mathematics in the composition of an artwork. Dalí enjoyed shocking people and his next step was the mixture of science and religious mysticism. He has been always surrounded by controversy and his boasts before the press and the writing of his uncertain memories have strengthen his image of uncomfortable personage, but it is also true that with all his actions, the artist was experiencing the artistic show business that Warhol would manage so well later. He also came early with the production of design objects and he built his personal park theme in Figueres (Girona). But, who was really Dalí? Master of provocation, maybe with pathological shyness, all his actions seem to be directed to fuel all the mystery, that even today, remains around him.

The exhibition in the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, Spain) tries to explain the figure of this genius. It has been organized together with the Center Pompidou (Paris, France), where the exhibition succeeded among the public for the quantity of exhibited pieces, more than 200, and their quality. In the exhibition, apart from the above mentioned Atomic Leda, a portrait of his idolized Gala, are listed his most outstanding masterpieces: The Great Masturbator, The persistence of Memory, Soft construction with boiled apricots, The Enigma of William Tell and The Temptation of St. Anthony, to mention a few.  

This exhibition, which is the first in Spain about the artist in 30 years, wants to tear down myths and that’s why his whole career is revisited: from his childhood and his stay in the hall of residence, to his undervalued American phase, and the several sides of his artistic creation: painting, design,  writing…so, once more, as a multidisciplinary artist, he was ahead of his time. 

More information: Museo Reina Sofía 

From April 27th to September 2nd, 2013