Five hundred works by Salvador Dalí are exhibited in Schloss Charlottenburg in Berlin until 15 December.
The exhibition is organised by the picture dealer, Beniamino Levi of the Stratton Foundation, who has also put together the Picasso drawings exhibition currently in the Palazzo Marino la Scala in Milan (The Art Newspaper No. 62, September 1996, pp. 28-29).
The Dalí show is in two parts, the sculpture and the prints. The former begins in 1933 when the artist started work on “Buste de femme retrospectif”, which proves how much Post-Human’s irreverent obsession with corporeality owes to the provocative kitsch of Surrealism. The bareheaded figure in the famous photo by Brassaï showing the young Dali next to Gala is wearing ears of corn like a stole, crowned by a baguette and is reproduced in bronze (rather like Jeff Koons with his “Angelus” by Millet of the 1990s).
Another sculpture, conceived in 1946 and cast in 1980, is “Elephant in space”, which makes elegant and learned allusion to the obelisk-bearing elephant by Bernini in Rome’s Piazza della Minerva—a perverse allusion as the sculpture was created in response to a competition for a work on the theme of the “Temptation of St Anthony”. The sculpture section also includes pieces made in glass by Daum, among which, “Le désir hyperrationel” of 1972.
The 119 prints are from the 1942 series “La vie secrete”, a kind of diary of the artist’s work, and there are also drawings, gouaches and watercolours.