“I arrived in America like a conqueror, with the intention of imposing my visions upon the country that invented progress and comfort”.
Salvador Dalí
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In June a major gallery exhibition will open the summer season. Dalí Universe is bringing the magic of Surrealism to Beverly Hills. In an exciting collaboration with Choice Contemporary, we are proud to present an extraordinary new exhibition: “Salvador Dalí : Sculpture and Works on Paper” at 313 N. Beverly Drive.
This curated collection offers visitors a rare, comprehensive overview of Salvador Dalí’s genius. The Choice show features powerful bronze sculptures and the delicate, poetic lines of his original graphic works.
This exhibition is not merely a display of objects; it is a homecoming. It is a portal back to the Golden Age of Hollywood, a territory that the Master of Surrealism conquered, reshaped, and immortalised during his transformative years in America.
When Salvador Dalí and his wife and muse, Gala, arrived in the United States in the 1940s, fleeing a war-torn Europe, they did not just find a haven; they found a playground perfectly aligned with his creativity.
“New York, you are an Egypt! But an Egypt turned inside out. Here they built pyramids of slavery to death, and here you erect pyramids of democracy with the vertical scale of your skyscrapers”, Dalí wrote.
Dalí recognised that America, and California in particular, possessed a unique, mythic energy, a landscape where fantasy and reality coexisted without friction.
During his American decade, Dalí captivated Hollywood. He collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on the unforgettable dream sequence for Spellbound (1945), designed high-fashion windows for New York luxury stores, and partnered with Walt Disney on the poetic animation Destino. Dalí understood that the American landscape was the ultimate vehicle for public dreaming.
Bringing these bronzes and works on paper to Beverly Hills is a deliberate nod to this historic legacy. It places Dalí back into the cultural fabric that embraced his radical genius, proving that his vision remains as vital and disruptive today as it was in the mid-20th century.
Among the works gracing the floors of Choice Contemporary, the bronze sculpture of Alice in Wonderland stands as a towering testament to Dalí’s obsession with physical transformation. In this three-dimensional sculpture, Dalí strips away the innocent, Victorian sentimentality of Lewis Carroll’s heroine, transforming her into an iconic symbol of the subconscious journey.
Cast in bronze, Dalí’s Alice does not possess a human face. Instead, her head and hands have blossomed into a chaotic, beautiful cluster of glistening roses, representing both fleeting youth and the blossoming of the dreaming mind. In her hands, she holds a skipping rope, frozen mid-air in a perfect, rigid arch. Dalí believed that materials must lose their traditional properties to tell the truth about human desire.
Dalí wanted to give a solid, three-dimensional form to his most fluid and delicate dreams. For him, sculpture was the ultimate way to touch the subconscious.
Moving from the weight of the bronze to the delicate intimacy of the prints, the exhibition’s “Works on Paper” section offers a profound counterpoint. Drawn directly from the prestigious collection of the Dalí Universe, this space showcases an exceptional selection of authentic limited edition lithographs and etchings.
Dalí was a supreme master of the graphic arts, utilising these mediums to embark on deep, psychoanalytic explorations of literature, mythology, and his own recurring obsessions. Every line drawn was, for the Master of Surrealism, a direct translation of the soul’s inner geometry. As he stated: “Drawing is the honesty of art. There is no cheating. It is either good or bad”.
Visitors will have the rare opportunity to admire several of Dalí’s most definitive and historically significant graphic series, including The Surrealist Piano, Les Caprices de Goya, and The Divine Comedy.
A cornerstone of the display on paper, “The Surrealist Piano” celebrated multicoloured lithograph serves as a brilliant example of Dalí’s hybrid iconography, where a traditional musical instrument beautifully morphs into biological, living surrealist forms.
Born from a monumental project originally commissioned by the Italian government to celebrate Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy series charts the poet’s journey through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Here, Dante’s epic text is entirely filtered through the lens of Dalí’s subconscious.
The Tristan and Isolde etchings explore the eternal duality of love and death, a mythic theme that Dalí constantly associated with his own symbiotic, lifelong bond with his wife and muse, Gala.
The exhibition “Salvador Dalí: Sculpture and Works on Paper” at Choice provides an educational and spiritual awakening for Surrealism enthusiasts and art collectors alike. Visitors will walk among the melting clocks that challenge the rigid tyranny of time, the elephants on spindly legs that defy gravity, and the mysterious crutches that support human vulnerability.
Whether exploring the heavy, majestic presence of the bronzes or the delicate intimacy of the prints, visitors are invited to do more than look, they are instead invited to experience what Dalí called the “hyper-aesthetic reality’” of a timeless genius.
As the Master of Surrealism confidently reminds us across the centuries: “Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision”.
Exhibition Venue: Choice Contemporary, 313 N. Beverly Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Exhibition Opening Date: 04.06.2026