The Exhibition
The exhibition is organized chronologically, beginning with the Catalan-born artist’s earliest efforts from his art school days in Madrid where he quickly absorbed the techniques of such Spanish masters as Zurbaran and Velázquez, and Goya, before assimilating more recent developments in painting such as Impressionism and Cubism. Included among the early works in the exhibition are astonishingly realistic paintings such as Basket of Bread, 1926, and portraits of family members, as in Figure at a Window, 1925, as well as his first contributions to the European avant-garde in the 1920s, when he rapidly reacted to the work of his contemporaries, Miró and Picasso. Other early works reflect his friendships with the poet Federico Garcia Lorca and the filmmaker Luis Buñuel with whom he developed the wholly individual mode of "anti-art"- seen in works such as Unsatisfied Desires, 1928 and the Cecinitas (Little Ashes), 1927-1928.
Dalí is perhaps best known for the Surrealist paintings he made between 1929 and 1939, in which he transformed personal desires and obsessions into some of the most arresting images of the 20th century. Paintings like The First Days of Spring, 1929, and The Enigma of Desire: My Mother..., 1929, executed with the minute realism that he called "hand made color photography", led André Breton to welcome the artist into the ranks of the Surrealist movement in 1929. That same year Dalí met Gala Eluard, then the wife of Surrealist poet Paul Eluard. She became his lifelong companion, artistic muse and alter ego, and the exhibition will include numerous portraits of her, among them Gala and the Angelus of Millet Preceding the Imminent Arrival of the Conical Anamorphoses, 1933.
Dalí invented what he called the "Paranoiac-Critical method" to investigate the mysteries of the subconscious. Influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, the artist invested myths and legends with disturbing psychological meanings, often related to his own estranged relationship with his father, a formidable notary, and his beloved mother, who died when he was 16 years old. Paintings such as William Tell, 1930, and the Spectre of Sex Appeal, 1934, show how Dalí transformed existing myths to create his own unique visual language. The "Paranoiac-Critical method" was also the source of the double images that are such a striking aspect of his work of the late 1930s, as seen in The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937, and Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach, 1938.
The exhibition will also examine Dalí’s response to the convulsive politics of Europe in the 1930s, seen in such landmark paintings as Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War and Autumnal Cannibalism (both 1936). These works are poignant allegories of the Spanish Civil War, which Dalí viewed as a "delirium of auto-strangulation." It was partly Dalí’s ambivalent reaction to the conflict in his homeland that led to his expulsion from the Surrealist group in 1939.
Another aspect of the retrospective will be a thorough examination of Dalí’s less known post-World War II period, which is marked by technical virtuosity and an interest in optical illusions, science and religion. His apparently contradictory allegiances include a revival of epic scale history painting and technological inventions such as holograms, as well as a complex relationship with the Catholic Church. In paintings such as The Madonna of Port-Lligat (first version) of 1949 and Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubicus), 1953-54, Dalí attempted to reconcile Christian iconography with images of dematerialisation inspired by the discoveries of particle physics and atomic energy. Dalí described this new phase of his art as "Nuclear Mysticism," which led him to create such monumental works as The Railway Station at Perpignan, 1965. The exhibition will conclude with Dali’s final painting The Swallow's Tail - Series on Catastrophes, 1983.
As the only American venue of this landmark exhibition, the Philadelphia Museum of Art provides an appropriate context. The Museum owns two major Dalí paintings, Agnostic Symbol, of 1932, and Soft Construction with Boiled Beans - Premonition of Civil War, of 1936, as well as a delightful drawing of Harpo Marx, made in 1937. Long considered one of the most important paintings Dalí ever made, Soft Construction... looks back to the work of his compatriot Francisco Goya, whose Saturn Devouring One of his Children, of 1820, may have inspired Dalí to embrace his own nightmarish vision of Spain on the brink of self inflicted annihilation. It entered the Museum in 1954 as part of the famous collection of Louise and Walter Arensberg in Hollywood, California, who had purchased it through their close friend and supporter, Marcel Duchamp.