"Salvador Dali. Magic Art"

Organizers: The Cultural-Historical Foundation “Link of Times” and the Faberge Museum
In partnership with the Moscow City Department of Culture, the Gala Salvador Dali Foundation (Figueres) and the Reina Sofía Center for the Arts National Museum (Madrid)
The curator of the exhibition is Monce Ager, Director of the Dali Museums of the Gala - Salvador Dali Foundation

“Quite independently of my objective significance as an artist — which I am the first to discuss — one thing is certain: if painting is destined to survive our era of barbaric mechanical progress, then its survivability will have a starting point in Salvador Dali…” These words, written by Salvador Dali in the prologue of his book “50 Secrets of Magic Mastery”, published in 1948, testify to the importance of painting and its fate for him, and - at the same time - what important role he played in her fate drove to himself. 70 years later, we have the opportunity to appreciate his visionary gift: today Salvador Dali remains one of the most popular, if not the most popular artist in the world. The images created by the great painter penetrated into all spheres of modern visual culture - in cinema, fashion, design, advertising, architecture. The name of one of the most influential art movements of the 20th century - surrealism - was included in our everyday speech largely due to the content that Salvador Dali’s painting gave him.

In January 2020, the Russian audience will have a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the work of a brilliant artist. In the Central Exhibition Hall "Manege" will open the exhibition "Salvador Dali. Magical art ”, organized by the Cultural-Historical Foundation“ Link of Times ”and the Faberge Museum in partnership with the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation (Figueres) and the National Museum“ Queen Sofia Art Center ”(Madrid). The exhibition will feature more than 180 works by Dali: paintings, drawings, watercolors and prints.

“Such a representative exhibition of Salvador Dali has never been in Russia. We are very pleased that we had the honor to show the work of this artist in Moscow, ”- V. S. Voronchenko, Chairman of the Board of the Cultural-Historical Foundation“ Link of Times ”, director of the Faberge Museum.

The exposition will be based on works from the collections of the Gala Salvador Dali Foundation and the Reina Sofia Art Center National Museum. Works from private European collections will also be shown.

The exhibition will provide an opportunity to trace the entire long career of Salvador Dali, to explore all stages of its development as a painter. The exhibition will feature paintings, from the youthful impressionistic landscapes of the 1910s to the last abstract canvases of the 1980s. Of particular importance is, of course, the mature work of Dali, his surreal and nuclear-mystical periods. They are represented at the exhibition by the most famous works - “The Invisible Man” (1929–32), “Sense of Speed” (1931), “Architectural Angelus Millet” (1933), “Landscape with Mysterious Elements” (1934), “Soft Self-Portrait with fried bacon "(1941)," Uranium-atomic melancholic idyll "(1945)," Dematerialization under the nose of Nero "(1947)," Maximum speed of the Raphael Madonna "(1954) and other masterpieces that reveal Dali’s unique authorial style and brought him world glory.

Having passed through the influence of many schools and movements at a young age, in 1929, Salvador Dali joined the surrealist movement led by Andre Breton, and soon became one of his main figures. In surrealism, he finds himself and fully realizes his huge creative potential. Passion for psychoanalysis and the theory of the unconscious and at the same time Vermeer and other old masters create the phenomenon of painting Dali, his landscapes illuminated by magical light and populated with bizarre images materializing his fears and desires. In small works of the 1930s, the artist reaches the heights of his pictorial skill. This period is wonderfully illustrated by the works “Landscape with mysterious elements” (1934), “Figure and drapery against the background of the landscape” (1935) and “Ordinary pagan landscape” (1937), in which Dali inscribes the head of Sigmund Freud, a thinker who had an undeniable influence.

From 1940 to 1948, Dali lived in the United States, creating not only new works, but also his image as a universal artist, like the great masters of the Renaissance. He paints, illustrates books, creates theater sets and costumes. In 1944, he staged the first “paranoid” ballet “Mad Tristan” to the music of Richard Wagner, choreographed by Leonid Myasin. Several paintings on the theme of “Mad Tristan” will be on display at the exhibition. Also for the first time in Russia will be shown the most important work of this period - “Soft self-portrait with fried bacon” (1941), which reflected the artist’s desire to “get rid of his old skin, skin of shapeless and revolutionary life” and find a new meaning of his art in the ideals of the Renaissance.

The second half of the 1940s and 1950s was marked by Dali’s appeal to "nuclear mysticism" and large-format works. Nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki deeply shocked the artist and had a huge impact on his work - his goal now was to achieve an understanding of the hidden forces and laws of the universe, as well as mastery of them with the help of mysticism. One of the main paintings of this period - "Dematerialization under the Nero’s Nose" (1947) is an artistic interpretation of the splitting of the atom.

Another important facet of Dali’s work is optical illusions and stereoscopic painting. From the 1960s until the end of his life, the artist admired science and new technologies, and actively used stereoscopy and holography in his works, considering them the language of the future. The exhibition will feature the most important work of this period ¬ – the stereoscopic diptych “Dali from the back, writing Galu from the back, immortalized by six virtual corneas temporarily reflected in six real mirrors”.

The last period of Dali’s work is marked by an appeal to the legacy of Michelangelo and Velazquez, as well as surprisingly modern expressionist semi-abstract compositions for their time.

Painting at the exhibition is complemented by masterfully made drawings of the 1930–40s, as well as a complete series of prints illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy - a project that Dali worked on in 1959–63. Among the drawings, of particular interest are original illustrations for the book “50 Secrets of Magic Mastery”, which Dali wrote in 1948, setting forth in his eccentric manner peculiar to him his understanding of painting.

Dali called painting “Magic Art” or “Magic Craftsmanship”, believing that technical excellence was just as significant for a twentieth-century artist as it was for Renaissance masters. Following Leonardo da Vinci, he considered painting the most important of the arts and dreamed of saving her from the "laziness and chaos" into which she plunged into the modern world.

The last of the 50 secrets that a painter must comprehend, according to Dali’s book, is that an angel should direct the hand of a painter who has sat down at an easel. This last one, it’s the very first necessary secret, is connected with the amazing personality of the wife and muse of Salvador Dali - Gala. Her image pervades the entire work of the master, his importance he constantly extols in his books. Gala - nee Elena Dyakonova - a mystical thread connecting the great artist with Russia.

“Dali was a man who was infinitely in love with art, with his wife Gala and with himself - and passionately longing for immortality of everything that he loved. These searches are reflected in the paintings of Dali, equally turned into the past of human culture and its future. We dedicate our exhibition to this bright, deep and inextricably linked with the best achievements of European civilization, ”- V. S. Voronchenko, Chairman of the Board of the Cultural-Historical Foundation“ Link of Times ”, director of the Faberge Museum.

An artist and a writer, a surrealist and a classic, an infinitely shocking and unusually deep person - this is how Salvador Dali will appear before the Russian audience, and his “magical art” will serve as a guide to the worlds he created.

The Cultural-Historical Foundation “Link of Times” is a non-profit organization that implements projects aimed at returning to Russia lost cultural and historical values.

The Faberge Museum continues a series of resonant exhibitions of the most famous and influential artists of the 20th century, in the framework of which there have already been shown the works of Frida Calo and Diego Rivera, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine and others. Exhibition “VIVA LA VIDA. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera ”in the Moscow Central Exhibition Hall“ Manege ”, which was visited by about 400,000 people over 3 months, was recognized as the most popular and visited exhibition of the year in Russia.