A substantial retrospective covering his entire career, drawing from the collections of the Reina Sofia, the Fundacio Gala Salvador Dali Museum in Figueres (Dali's birthplace) and the Salvador Dali Museum in St Petersburg, Florida, USA.
Very early works (1918-21) then a period of hopping through a series of modern art styles starting with cubism throughout the twenties, during which - interestingly - it's the ones which take the human body as their subject which most clearly prefigure his later style ("Nude" 1924, "Nude in the Water" 1924, "Girl with Curls" 1926).
Then his most familiar surrealist period of the 30s, which is well represented but not overly so, and I felt the force of these a bit anew - those yellows and blues gleaming vividly through his dreamscapes: "Invisible Sleeper, Horse, and Lion" (1930), "The Shades of Night Descending" (1931), "The Invisible Man" (1932), "Enigmatic Elements in a Landscape" (1934), the glowingly limpid "Surrealist Composition with Invisible Figures" (1936), and the out and out nightmare of "Palladio's Corridor of Thalia" (1938) which is an early appearance of the girl with the skipping rope who is his motif in those wonderful illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (also on display here, along with a lot of other drawings).
Paintings, drawings, etc through the remaining decades of his life, including some unexpected, wonderful jewellery in gold with inlaid gems.
An aside: it is unfathomable that it was seven years ago that the NGV had its major Dali exhibition. It seems so recent!
Very early works (1918-21) then a period of hopping through a series of modern art styles starting with cubism throughout the twenties, during which - interestingly - it's the ones which take the human body as their subject which most clearly prefigure his later style ("Nude" 1924, "Nude in the Water" 1924, "Girl with Curls" 1926).
Then his most familiar surrealist period of the 30s, which is well represented but not overly so, and I felt the force of these a bit anew - those yellows and blues gleaming vividly through his dreamscapes: "Invisible Sleeper, Horse, and Lion" (1930), "The Shades of Night Descending" (1931), "The Invisible Man" (1932), "Enigmatic Elements in a Landscape" (1934), the glowingly limpid "Surrealist Composition with Invisible Figures" (1936), and the out and out nightmare of "Palladio's Corridor of Thalia" (1938) which is an early appearance of the girl with the skipping rope who is his motif in those wonderful illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (also on display here, along with a lot of other drawings).
Paintings, drawings, etc through the remaining decades of his life, including some unexpected, wonderful jewellery in gold with inlaid gems.
An aside: it is unfathomable that it was seven years ago that the NGV had its major Dali exhibition. It seems so recent!
