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The Monterey History and Art Association Salvador Dali Exhibition which opened in Monterey, California in 2016, held hundreds of works of Dali collected by Dimitry Piterman, a Ukrainian/American sportsman and businessman. A video tour of the Dali Exhibition as it used to be, is available online.
The Dali Exhibition was housed in the Museum of Monterey, Monterey California, a project of the Monterey History and Art Association in the wharf area of Monterey. The Museum’s founders established a maritime museum, which was for a time superseded by The Dali Expo. When visited in November 2023 the Museum appears to be used for assorted exhibits, including lithographs attributed to Dali, and historic maritime exhibits.
Dalí17 was the original name of the exhibition. In 2018, published news revealed that the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres, Spain had sued Dalí17 claiming unauthorized use of the artist’s name and imagery. Subsequently the logo of the exhibition, which featured an image of Dali, was removed from the building. At the same time the name of the exhibition was changed to Dali Expo. Subsequently most of the Dali material was removed from the Museum.
Dali in Monterey
In addition to Dali’s art, the Dali Exhibition featured exhibits related to the life of Dali and his wife Gala while they were living in Monterey at periods during and after WW II. In Monterey, Dali painted important works, and completed his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. Dali also introduced his flamboyant life style to Monterey. In September of 1941 Dali, with much local help, threw a fantastic party in the Del Monte Hotel to raise money for European artist refugees. The party was called “A Surrealistic Night in an Enchanted Forest”. The party included a Dali-decorated ball room, exotic costumes, a lion cub from the San Francisco Zoo, a crashed car with a manikin nude corpse, and Gala sleeping on the biggest bed that could be obtained from Hollywood. Later, in the evening, dancing bandaged corpses emerged from the auto wreck. Celebrities attending the party included Gloria Vanderbilt, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Ginger Rogers, Robinson and Una Jeffers, and Clark Gable. Photograph taken at the party have been on display at the Museum.
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in Paris in the early 1920s, known for its revolutionary visual artworks and writings. The aim was to combine the subconscious, dreams, and reality. Surrealist artists painted illogical scenes, often bizarre, combining these elements. They created strange creatures from everyday objects and figures. Dali’s pronounced surrealist period in which he painted many of his most important works was in the 1930’s, but through his life, and in the works that were hung in the Dali Exhibition he used surrealist elements, and some might say in his life.
During his lifetime, Salvador Dali was by many measures the most successful artist of all time. Dali studied and valued the painting style of classical Spanish artists. Throughout his career Dali was noted for his draftsmanship, his imaginative subject matter, and his world-wide popularity. He objected to the abstract painting style used by many of his contemporaries.
As a child in Spain, Dali stubbornly insisted on following his own path, and was noted for his attention-attracting antics. These characteristics continued his whole life. He was accepted to art school because of his outstanding talent, even though the art he submitted in his application did not correspond to the schools requirements. After two sessions of art school he was expelled for his insubordinate attitude.
Subsequently Dali went to Paris and fell in with the Picasso and the Surrealists. Dali experimented with Cubism, then went full out for Surrealism.
Dali considered himself in a class beyond the other surrealists. He said “the only difference between the surrealists and I is that I am a surrealist.” Dali developed his own method of creating surrealistic images, which he called paranoiac-critical, involving an examination and interpretation of his psyche and its obsessions.
Dali worked on surrealistic cinema projects many times in his life, with European film makers and later with Disney and others. Many of these works were shown daily in the Dali Exhibition theater.
In 1929 Dali met Gala, a strong-willed Slavic woman living a Bohemian life style in Paris, married to another artist. Gala soon left her husband to be with Dali and control his career. Gala served as a model for many of Dali’s paintings and is depicted in many of the works exhibited in the Dali Exhibition.
In 1931, Dalí painted one of his most iconic works, The Persistence of Memory, which featured a barren landscape with soft, melting watches. This painting and others were exhibited soon after in the US. There the paintings and Dali’s bizarre costumes and behavior created a sensation; the same thing happened later in London. In 1936 Dali was so famous he appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
Throughout the 1930’s Dali continued to execute surrealistic paintings, often incorporating double images, see Swans Reflecting Elephants. In these years Dali also provided many pen or ink drawings, gouaches, and watercolors as illustrations for fashion magazines. In Paris Dali delighted in hobnobbing with rival fashion designers such as Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli.
Later life and works
After fleeing Europe as the Nazi influence grew, Dali and Gala sailed to the US and stayed from 1940 until 1948, usually wintering in New York and summering on the cooler Monterey Peninsula, California. While in Monterey Dali participated in the artistic life of the community. In New York, and later in Europe after WW II Dali partied in society, so much so that Gala tired of the life, and allowed Dali to escort other striking women. While in the US Dali collaborated in many projects, ballet, advertisements, and movies.
In 1948 Dali and Gala returned to Europe; subsequent Dali paintings were more religious or science-based, less an expression of his subconscious. Many of Dali’s paintings of all periods contain optical illusions such as images that can be seen it two ways. His later works often contain geometric figures.
From 1963 on, Dali put extensive artistic effort into the works that were seen in the Dali Exhibition collection, which are signed limited quantity reproductions in books and portfolios of Dali’s gouache, watercolor, and lithographic works created in large editions under commission by individuals and publishers. In numerous cases Dali participated in the preparation of the reproduction media, allowing these editions to be designated original. In these graphic projects Dali showed engagement with history, art, and literature, as well a vocabulary of images related to his personal obsessions. Viewers of Dali’s works should be prepared for Dali’s proclivity for nude and sexually graphic images.
Traces of Dali 