Discovering the surrealist world of Spanish artist Salvador Dalí
If you’re planning a trip to Barcelona, be sure to hop on a train and venture out to Figueres, a small city in northeastern Spain. Not only the birthplace of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali, it is also home to the magnificent Dalí Theatre-Museum. The second most visited museum in Spain, it features one of the largest collections of Dalí’s artwork. If you’re an avid art lover like me, you’ll find that it beautifully showcases the artist’s weird and wonderful world, offering visitors a unique opportunity to explore the mind of a genius.
Born in 1904, Salvador Dalí was an artist and showman with a reputation for creating bizarre and sometimes disturbing surrealist work. His highly imaginative mind is revealed by his extensive and impressive artistic repertoire, which encompasses painting, sculpture, photography and film. His most famous and recognised piece, The Persistence of Memory (1931), shows peculiar images of melting clocks, an idea that Dalí claimed symbolised the soft melting nature of Camembert cheese!
Arguably, his greatest masterpiece is the spectacular Theatre-Museum itself, that he designed and built in his hometown. The unique institution occupies a former Municipal Theatre building destroyed at the end of the Spanish Civil War. In the 1960s, Dalí decided to actively participate in the structure’s planning, design and rebuilding. In typically elliptical fashion, he explained his reasoning behind the construction:
“It’s obvious that other worlds exist, that’s certain; but, as I’ve already said on many other occasions, these other worlds are inside ours, they reside in the earth and precisely at the centre of the dome of the Dalí Museum, which contains the new, unsuspected and hallucinatory world of Surrealism.”
Dalí’s vision became a reality and the remarkable creation is like no other. In order to offer a real insight to his unique and captivating life, everything within the museum was created and designed by Dalí himself. His world of fantasy is blended with eclectic architecture, sculpture and paintings; with some of his most outstanding pieces of work such as the Wind Palace Room, the Rainy Cadillac, and the iconic Mae West Room with the red lips resembling a soft sensual couch. He cleverly integrated objects to create an illusionistic composition.
Known for his quirky and unconventional outlook on life, the Dalí museum is no exception. Displaying a broad range of the artist’s extraordinary work, the organised chaos of his museum adds to the evocative atmosphere of the exhibition. One of the most striking partsis the transparent structure that takes on the form of a geodesic dome crowning the building, a concept brought to life by architect Emilio Pérez Piñero (1935–1972). The dome has not only become an iconic motif of the Museum but also a symbolic reference for the town of Figueres.
Dalí’s variation of work that was developed through experimentations with Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Metaphysical painting, evolved naturally into Surrealism by the late 1920s. His odd dress-sense and extrovert manners gained him great attention, often with him being referred to as a ‘mad genius’. The extraordinary legacy of the eccentric artist is shown perfectly in his museum. His notoriously unorthodox pieces will fill viewers with amazement and confusion, yet one should not forget to admire his work for its great depth and painterly skills.
The modernity of the museum is both enchanting and mesmerizing. His chaotic yet cleverly creative mind is exhibited in all its glory. The Dalí Theatre-Museum is much more than just a museum of Dalí’s work; it is a step back in time, a way to discover his rich life that will add another dimension to one’s education in Surrealist art.
Do you have any thoughts on Dali’s work? Are you a fan of his weird creations? I would love to hear your comments.
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Originally published on The Culture Trip.
Davina lives on the Mediterranean island of Malta where she works as a UX designer. Originally from the UK she has also lived in Barcelona. See some of her work here: www.davinaspriggs.com
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