- Title: SPAIN: Dali's genius on show in Madrid
- Date: 25th April 2013
- Summary: VARIOUS OF DALI PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHS
- Embargoed: 10th May 2013 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Spain
- Country: Spain
- Topics: Arts
- Reuters ID: LVAEVQS8D1VZSP20AKZIY7MQEVGI
- Story Text: The Reina Sofia museum unveiled one of the broadest-ever retrospectives of Spanish artist Salvador Dali, architect of surrealism, on Thursday (April 25).
The exhibition features some 200 works by the Spanish master, including the famous painting "The Persistence of Memory" with melting pocket watches, which Dali said was inspired by watching camembert cheese liquefying in the sun.
Also on show are dozens of works on paper, projects for stage and screen, photographs and films such as the "Un Chien Andalou", written with Spanish director Luis Bunuel.
Curator of the centre Pompidou Jean-Hubert Martin said the exhibition gives visitors the opportunity to discover Dali in a broader perspective.
"Well the idea for this exhibition is to show Dali in the richness of his creation as an incredible talented inventor in many different fields. Of course the core of the exhibition is a really wonderful selection of paintings coming from museums around the world. But we have added all these different fields like the cinema where he was very active together with Bunuel and Hitchcock and other people," he said.
The exhibition, which runs from April 27 to September 2, is set to mirror the success of the display at the Pompidou Centre in Paris which attracted more than 790.000 visitors.
Named "All of the poetic suggestions and all of the plastic possibilities" the show is organised into 11 sections in chronological order.
The work on display begins with a selection of pieces that the flamboyant artist created at the beginning of his career and his time at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid in the 1920s, where he met other Spanish intellectuals like poet Federico Garcia Lorca and filmmaker Luis Bunuel.
Born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali in 1904 in the Catalan town of Figueres, Spain, Dali remains a controversial artist, loved for his creative genius but dismissed by some as a madman and hated for his at times grotesque artistic vision.
Organisers said the exhibition seeks to bring back the essence of Dali, something that Jean-Hubert Martin said is almost impossible to define.
"I don't know if somebody can define in a few words the essence of Dali. He is so controversial, paradoxical that it is very difficult. But, well the exhibition tends to give this idea to the public that he goes in many directions and each time you say, 'Dali is this,' somebody can tell you, 'Yeah but he is also the opposite,' because he was a sort of intellectual anarchist," he said.
Although an anarchist in his youth and deeply attached to his native Catalonia, he was criticised for later declaring himself a monarchist, turning to religion and moving closer to the post-war authoritarian regime of Francisco Franco.
His love of show business and manic declarations such as "Surrealism is me", alienated many. But he is cited as an influence for many artists such as Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons.
Dali died of heart failure in Figueres in 1989, seven years after the death of his wife and muse Gala. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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