Dali record a Turkish delight

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-23 14:10

The largest Salvador Dali exhibition outside Spain has just opened with 269 works by the Catalan surrealist plus photos, movies and manuscripts shedding light on his life and artistic journey.

The 33 paintings, 113 drawings, 111 engravings and 12 lithographs will be on display until January 20 at a private museum housed in a sprawling Ottoman riverside mansion.

The collection retraces Dali's artistic journey right back to his first canvasses depicting the Catalan countryside of Figueras, where he was born in 1904 and died in 1989.

It also figures the ultimate homages he paid at the end of a 60-year career to his idols, Velazquez and Michelangelo.

The exhibition includes several pieces rarely seen in public. "For the first time, it will be possible to see many illustrations by Dali on several selected passages from Don Quixote and Dante's Divine Comedy," says museum director Nazan Olcer.

Organizing a Dali exhibition in Turkey, where the artist and the surrealism movement are relatively little known, was a challenge, according to curator Aguer Teixidor.

"We have given many keys to open the visitor's eyes ... to imagination, creativity and provocation," she says.

The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation was established in 1983 by Dali to promote and protect his heritage. It has an unrivalled collection of nearly 4,000 of his works.

The museum's Picasso exhibition in 2005-2006 attracted a record Turkish crowd of 258,000, a record it hopes to surpass with the Dali show.

(China Daily 09/23/2008 page19)