“All my experiences are visceral … everything begins in the mouth and then goes elsewhere in the body, with the nerves. Man’s first philosophical instrument par excellence is his awareness of the real by his jaws”.
Salvador Dalí
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The city of Modena celebrated Salvador Dalí’s anniversary with a sensory experience at the Palazzo dei Musei on May 11, 2025.
On the day Salvador Dalí would have turned 121, the Palazzo dei Musei in Modena opened its doors to an event that went far beyond a traditional celebration.
“Dinner with Dalí” was an evening where art, gastronomy, and imagination merged into an immersive experience designed to awaken all the senses, in honor of the Master of Surrealism.
The initiative, part of the exhibition In the Mind of the Master – Salvador Dalí: Art and Psyche, transformed the museum halls into a dreamlike theater, filled with visions, aromas, and flavours directly inspired by Dalí’s work.
“I know what I’m eating. I don’t know what I’m doing”, Salvador Dalí once said.
Amid sculptures, engravings, and psychedelic atmospheres, guests took part in a unique dinner-performance designed by Modenese chef Tommaso Zoboli, who reinterpreted some of the most eccentric recipes from Les Dîners de Gala – the famous cookbook published by Dalí in 1973.
“We would like to state clearly that, beginning with the very first recipes, Les Dîners de Gala, with its precepts and its illustrations, is uniquely devoted to the pleasures of Taste. Don’t look for dietetic formulas here”, is written on the very first page of Les Dîners de Gala.
Written and illustrated personally by Salvador Dalí, Les Dîners de Gala is not just a cookbook, but a true surrealist gastronomic manifesto. Featuring 136 dishes, some created in collaboration with the most renowned Parisian restaurants, the volume is a journey through exotic flavours, erotic allusions, and baroque theatricality.
It also includes provocative chapters such as Les je mange Gala (“I eat Gala”), where culinary eroticism flirts with symbolic cannibalism, creating a sensory vertigo that reflects Dalí’s visionary poetics.
Throughout the Modenese evening, each course was accompanied by projections, Dalinian storytelling, and readings from the book. The audience was able to savour the taste of the absurd and be transported into an alternate reality, where the rules of time, form, and reason are suspended, just like in one of the Catalan artist’s paintings.
Supported by the Municipality of Modena and curated in collaboration with the Dalí Universe, the event was a rare example of cross-contamination between visual, performative, and culinary arts. A sincere, bold, and multisensory tribute to the Master of Surrealism, celebrating his birthday in a truly Dalinian fashion.
