ST. PETERSBURG — This fall, The Dalí Museum will present “Dalí: Disruption + Devotion,” a special exhibition exploring how Salvador Dalí made the European tradition the raw material of his own art, restaging its great predecessors to claim a place among them.
Co-organized with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through a collection of rarely lent works, the exhibition will open on Saturday, Nov. 7, at The Dalí Museum, One Dalí Boulevard, St. Petersburg. The exhibition will continue through April 18. Featuring 64 paintings and works on paper spanning five centuries, “Dalí: Disruption + Devotion” places Dalí’s work in context with renowned predecessors including El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Luis Meléndez and Francisco Goya.
“These classical works were essential to Dalí,” said Hank Hine, executive director of The Dalí Museum. “By weaving together the compositional mastery of the past with the restless imagination of his own time, Dalí set out to join the artists he studied and in doing so, showed that art remains a living conversation, one that honors its origins even as it pushes into new territory.”
Rather than rejecting tradition, the exhibition argues that Dalí continuously returned to it, reworking classical compositions, religious imagery, portraiture and still-life painting into psychologically charged and technically daring new forms. Organized by six thematic sections — Fantasy and Nightmare; The Last Old Master; Velázquez and the Portrait; Not So Still Life; Higher Callings; and Inexorable Time — the exhibition reveals Dalí as a painter who mined the whole history of art to fashion himself into its latest heir.
“Salvador Dalí can’t be categorized easily. He was a painter, printmaker, author, filmmaker, performer, jewelry designer and much more,” said Frederick Ilchman. Ilchman is chair and Mrs. Russell W. Baker Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. “But he was also an art historian with a deep knowledge of the great European artists who preceded him. This exhibition offers an unexpected view of the famous artist, revealing that a showman could also be profound.”
Highlights of the exhibition include:
• Velázquez and Portraiture: Pairings, including Velázquez’s Infanta Maria Theresa and Dalí’s Velázquez Painting the Infanta Marguerita with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory, explore Dalí’s fascination with Spanish court painting, artistic identity and legacy.
• Dalí Reimagines Goya: Dalí’s Les Caprices de Goya heliogravures are shown beside Goya’s original etchings, highlighting how Dalí transformed historic imagery through surrealist interventions, dry point additions and vivid color.
• Higher Callings: Religious paintings and imagery connected to El Greco, Ribera and Orazio Gentileschi reveal how themes of mysticism, faith and transcendence continued to shape Dalí’s artistic imagination.
Set against The Dalí Museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition is further enriched by Dalí’s “Biblia Sacra” and “Changes in Great Masterpieces” series, examining his simultaneous reverence for and reinvention of religious and artistic traditions.
Accompanying the exhibition is its inaugural scholarly catalog for “Dalí: Disruption + Devotion.” Edited by the curators of the exhibition, including Ilchman and Jennifer Cohen, director of curatorial affairs at The Dalí Museum, the catalog includes contributions by Julia Vázquez, Claire Howard, Emma Kohlmayer and William Jeffett. The publication expands on the exhibition’s themes through in-depth essays and features a new interview with contemporary artist Jeff Koons, who reflects on Dalí’s enduring influence and the lasting dialogue between historical and contemporary art — a rare pairing of art’s great provocateurs, past and present.
For more information, visit TheDali.org/Disruption
