"I am Surrealism!"

“I am Surrealism!”. This maxim of Salvador Dalí’s has become prophetic. Dalí made himself the most famous and admired of the Surrealists, and his iconography has long had a place in the popular imaginary.

 

Dalí embodies transgression, freedom and rebellion; the power to blur the line between art and everyday reality. In the artistic sphere, Dalí is also known for being the creator of the paranoiac-critical method, an irrational means of apprehending reality, with double or invisible images which invoke the phenomena of perception or interpretation of a reality far more complex than it appears at first glance.

THE EXHIBITION

The surrealist Dalí landscape is real and dreamlike, photographic and melancholic, specific and paranoiac at the same time. Through the landscape he reflects in his works, we can outline Dalí’s surrealism which he defines, following André Breton, as: “Surrealism: psychic automatism, by means of which it is proposed to express, be it through writing, verbally or in any other way, the real functioning of thought; of the dictation of thought in the absence of any type of aesthetic or moral control”. This offers a foray into the subconscious so vindicated by Freud, which Dalí presents in a precise manner with a dose of reality and even hyperreality. 

 

The painting Man with His Head Full of Clouds is the metaphorical work that opens the exhibition. In this case, a man integrated into the landscape and into the sky. A man-window who offers us an opening to the exterior, combining the subconscious with a more tangible reality. The 12 oil paintings by Dalí in this show enable us to engage with the “enigmatic elements” and the landscapes which make his works so unique, arousing curiosity and attraction. These landscapes provoke. They allow us to talk about apparatus, perspectives, and elongated shadows, of the concepts of visible-invisible, cypresses, fetishist Surrealist objects, spectres and ghosts, of Freud and psychoanalysis, of perception and the ability to look. About open readings with multiple meanings, which always require the participation and the gaze of the spectator to set them off. We are talking, in short, of the Surrealism of Salvador Dalí, a surrealism which extends throughout his artistic career and which we wish to highlight with Poetry of America, an eclectic, classic, and surrealist work. 

MULTIMEDIA

We invite you to click the button here below and gain access to the full list of “Minutes of Surrealism” (available in Catalan and Spanish). This collection of videos is full of information concerning the artworks of the exhibition.

This list will be periodically updated with new contents.

 

 

GO TO THE PLAYLIST

TH EXHIBITION IN IMAGES

  • Exhibition: "I am Surrealism!"
  • Exhibition: "I am Surrealism!"
  • Exhibition: "I am Surrealism!"
  • Exhibition: "I am Surrealism!"
  • Man with His Head Full of Clouds, c. 1936
    © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP/Figueres, 2020
  • Study for "Honey is Sweeter than Blood"", 1926
    © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP/Figueres, 2020
  • The Sense of Speed, 1931
    © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP/Figueres, 2020
  • Eclipse and Vegetable Osmosis, 1934
    © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP/Figueres, 2020
  • Enigmatic Elements in a Landscape , 1934
    © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP/Figueres, 2020
  • Figure and Drapery in a Landscape, 1935
    © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP/Figueres, 2020
  • Singularities, c. 1935
    © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP/Figueres, 2020
  • Surrealist Composition with Invisible Figures, c. 1936
    © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP/Figueres, 2020
  • The Spectre of Sex-Appeal, c.1934
    © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP/Figueres, 2020
  • Phantom Cart, 1933
    © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP/Figueres, 2020
  • Average Pagan Landscape, 1937
    © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP/Figueres, 2020

Publication

Discover the different areas and works that make up our exhibition. Download the dossier and prepare your visit.

 

Texts by :
Montse Aguer, Director of the Dalí Museums
Carme Ruiz, Chief Curator of the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí
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Why Visit the Exhibition?

  • “I am Surrealism!” Landscapes Outside of Time allows us to delve into Dalí’s Surrealist imaginary. An imaginary that largely comes from his geographical environment. An environment that defines and determines him. Montse Aguer Director of the Dalí Museums
  • “I am Surrealism!” Landscapes Outside of Time is a unique opportunity to observer Dalí’s Surrealism in the collection of the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí.

    Carme Ruiz Chief Curator of theFundació Gala-Salvador Dalí