Venice hosts official exhibition marking Dali centenaryArguably the best known painter of the 20th century, Salvador Dali is being remembered with a major retrospective marking the centenary of his birth in Venice's sumptuous Palazzo Grassi from this weekend.
The works on show come from 130 museums, private collections and cultural institutions in 15 countries, from Belgium to the Vatican City and including Brazil, Israel, Mexico and the United States in between. The largest of them, measuring almost five metres (15 feet) in length, is "The Dream of Venus" painted in 1933. The oil on canvas on masonite work is on loan from the Hiroshima Art museum in Japan. The smallest work is the tiny "Picture of Anna Maria Dali in a bathing suit," barely larger than a passport photo taken in the summer of 1927. "Dali would have loved to see his works displayed in a classical Venetian palace on the Grand Canal, a place he loved and which brought so many memories back to him," said architect Oscar Tusquets Blanca, who designed the exhibition, which unfolds through Palazzo Grassi's 36 rooms, covering 4,000 square metres. Some of the works, like "Port of Cadaques" (1919) and "The Lane to Port Lligat with View of Cap Creus" (1922/23) are devoted to his beloved Cadaques in northeastern Spain, where the artist spent summers as a teenager with his family. Another key painting in the Dali oeuvre is "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans" which came to represent the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War as much as Picasso's "Guernica". It portrays Dali's vision of his country as a decomposing figure tearing itself apart, even if art historians discovered he had begun the painting prior to the outbreak of the war and only afterwards associated it with the conflict. The multi-talented artist was not only a painter, but a sculptor, film-maker, writer and scene designer as well as a self-publicist, which alienated him somewhat from many of his contemporaries. He also had a keen interest in psychoanalysis and in the new discoveries of physics and chemistry. The Palazzo Grassi event is the official exhibition of his centenary, in collaboration with the Spanish state. Source: Agencies | ||
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