Wednesday, 22. March 2023
“Painting is my least important aspect. What really matters is the almost imperialistic structure of my genius. Painting is only an infinitesimal part of that genius.” Salvador Dalí
“Salvador Dalí – Journey into the imagination of a genius” in Hungary.
The Dalí Universe is pleased to collaborate with HADRAN and announce the opening of the exhibition “Salvador Dalí – Journey into the imagination of a genius – The unlimited/boundless Dalí” scheduled for this Thursday 23 March 2023.
The Dalí Universe Collection will be presented for the first time in Hungary and can be visited until the end of June 2023.
Salvador Dalí was not just a painter, but a multifaceted artist in the true sense of the word. An iconic personality of the surrealist movement, Dalí explored a wide variety of artistic expressions, ranging from painting to sculpture, from literature to cinema, to furnishings, jewelery and advertising.
The exhibition will be organized at the Kompex building located in Budapest, in Király u. 26, and will present more than 150 works, including bronze sculptures, surrealist furniture, graphics, gold works and jewel sculptures, which will reveal the richness of the expressive variety that the Catalan artist has chosen to illustrate his famous surrealist icons.
The museum-sized sculpture “Space Venus”, designed by Salvador Dalí in 1977, will enrich the exhibition by showing the public some of the most famous and well-known Dalinian symbols: the soft clock, the ants and the egg.
These symbols confirm the extraordinary ability of the genius of Surrealism in processing emotions, memories, experiences lived during childhood, and transforming them into the third dimension. Dalí himself stated: “My work is the reflection, one of the innumerable reflections of what I create, write, think”.
The glass paste sculptures, created in collaboration with the prestigious French glassmaker Daum Cristallerie, amaze with the richness of their colors and shapes. The works and gold coins, another material used by Dalí in his creative process, recall the jewels of the court of Louis XIV.
The exhibition will also feature a Dalí Illustrator. Graphics of various sizes will emphasize the extraordinary Dalinian fantasy, the dreamlike dimension and distorted reality, as in the engraving “After 50 years of Surrealism” (1974), up to embracing the themes of classical literature, as in the print “Much Ado about Shakespeare ” (1968).
Dalí’s creativity can also be admired through surrealist furniture. Specifically, his famous “Mae West Sofa” confirms the multifaceted aspect of the personality of the genius of Surrealism and his extraordinary ability to draw inspiration from the people he met and invite them to observe objects according to a different interpretation.
The prestigious Dalí Universe Collection was collected by Beniamino Levi, President of Dalí Universe, passionate art collector and great connoisseur of Salvador Dalí, with whom he collaborated during the 1960s.
Beniamino Levi was fascinated by Salvador Dalí’s ability to use different means of artistic creativity and dedicated his entire life to collecting Dalí’s works; especially his three-dimensional creations. During the years of collaboration with Dalí, Levi commissioned the Catalan artist to create a series of bronze works based on the most famous iconographic images present in his pictorial production.
Today, the prestigious Dalí Universe Collection of works of art is the result of years of intense work by President Beniamino Levi, who began collecting the works of Salvador Dalí in 1956, when he opened his Art Gallery in Milan in Via Montenapoleone.
“I am honored to present part of the Dalí Universe collection for the first time in Hungary” comments Beniamino Levi regarding the exhibition “Salvador Dalí – Journey into the imagination of a genius – The unlimited/boundless Dalí” in the city of Budapest.
The exhibition will show visitors the genius of Surrealism within the exhibition itinerary organized in the Kompex building in Budapest, the Catalan artist who declared: “Painting is my least important aspect. What really matters is the almost imperialistic structure of my genius. Painting is only an infinitesimal part of that genius”..