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Title:USA: DALI PAINTING "Christopher Columbus discovers America" shown.
Date:13th January 1960
Summary:In the privacy of a Madison Avenue Art Gallery, Salvador Dali showed his latest work "Christopher Columbus discovers America" January 12th. Commissioned by Huntongdon Hartford, the heir to the vast A & P supermarket chain store for the new Museum he is building in Columbus Circle, New York, the painting is Dali's largest measuring twelve feet fourteen feet.
The New York Times said of the painting "Mr Dali's nuclear-metaphysical" period of some year's duration has entered with the new work what the artist calls his "silver phase". The steely blue canvas with a forest of crosses, is dominated by huge figure that Mr. Dali calls the "Immaculate Conception". The artist's wife was the model for the image.
In the foreground at the feet of Columbus is a large pear shaped sea urchin. This is a symbol, the artist said, of Columbus' gift to the new world - "the fundamentals of what will later be the most outstanding American achievement, atomic science."
Two double invisible images of Christ - according to Mr Dali, are reflected from a smaller image, recognizable in the painting.