The Dalí Theatre and Museum ( ca, Teatre-Museu Dalí, ; es, Teatro-Museo Dalí) is a museum dedicated to the artist

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...

in his home town of

Figueres Figueres (, ; , es, Figueras, ) is the capital of the ''comarca'' of Alt Empordà, in the province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. The town is the birthplace of artist Salvador Dalí, and houses the Teatre-Museu Gala Salvador Dalí, a large museu ...

, in

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the north ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. Salvador Dalí lived there from 1984 to 1989, and is buried in a crypt below the stage. The museum received 1,368,755 visitors in 2016.

Museum

The heart of the museum is the town's theatre that Dalí knew as a child. It was where one of the first public exhibitions of young Dalí's art was shown. The old theatre was burned during the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...

and remained in a state of ruin. In 1960, Dalí and the mayor of Figueres decided to rebuild it as a museum dedicated to the town's most famous son. In 1968, the city council approved the plan, and construction began the following year. The architects were Joaquim de Ros i Ramis and Alexandre Bonaterra. The museum opened on September 28, 1974, and it expanded through the mid-1980s. The museum now includes buildings and courtyards adjacent to the old theatre. The museum displays the single largest and most diverse collection of works by Salvador Dalí, the core of which was from the artist's personal collection. In addition to Dalí paintings from all decades of his career, there are Dalí sculptures, three-dimensional

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...

s, mechanical devices, and other curiosities from Dalí's imagination. A highlight is a three-dimensional

anamorphic Anamorphic format is the cinematography technique of shooting a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film or other visual recording media with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio. It also refers to the projection format in which a distorted ...

living-room installation with a ''

Mae West Lips Sofa The ''Mae West Lips Sofa'' is a surrealist sculpture in the form of a sofa by Salvador Dalí. The light red, sized seating furniture made of polyurethane foam coated with a red polidur coating was shaped in 1972 after the lips of actress Mae We ...

'', a custom sofa that looks like the face of

Mae West Mae West (born Mary Jane West; August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American stage and film actress, playwright, screenwriter, singer, and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned over seven decades. She was known for her breezy ...

when viewed from a certain spot. The museum also houses a small selection of works by other artists collected by Dalí, ranging from

El Greco Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos ( el, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El G ...

and Bougereau to

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

and John de Andrea, In accordance with Dalí's specific request, a second-floor gallery is devoted to the work of his friend and fellow

Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...

artist Antoni Pitxot, who also became director of the museum after Dalí's death. A glass

geodesic dome A geodesic dome is a hemispherical thin-shell structure (lattice-shell) based on a geodesic polyhedron. The triangular elements of the dome are structurally rigid and distribute the structural stress throughout the structure, making geodesic dom ...

cupola crowns the stage of the old theatre, and Dalí is buried in a

crypt A crypt (from Latin ''crypta'' "vault") is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi, or religious relics. Originally, crypts were typically found below the main apse of a chur ...

below the stage floor. The space formerly occupied by the audience has been transformed into a courtyard open to the sky, with

Dionysian The Apollonian and the Dionysian are philosophical and literary concepts represented by a duality between the figures of Apollo and Dionysus from Greek mythology. Its popularization is widely attributed to the work ''The Birth of Tragedy'' by Fr ...

nude figurines standing in the old balcony windows. A Dalí installation inside a full-sized car, inspired by ''

Rainy Taxi ''Rainy Taxi'' (1938), also known as ''Mannequin Rotting in a Taxi-Cab'', is a three-dimensional artwork created by Salvador Dalí, consisting of an actual automobile with two mannequin occupants. A male chauffeur with a shark head is in the ...

'' (1938), is parked near the centre of the space.

Art collection

The Dalí Theatre and Museum holds the largest collection of major works by Dalí in a single location. Some of the most important exhibited works are ''Port Alguer'' (1924), ''The Spectre of Sex-appeal'' (1932), ''Soft self-portrait with grilled bacon'' (1941), ''Poetry of America—the Cosmic Athletes'' (1943), ''Galarina'' (1944–45), '' Basket of Bread'' (1945), ''

Leda Atomica ''Leda Atomica'' is a 1949 painting by Salvador Dalí. The picture depicts Leda, the mythological queen of Sparta, with the swan. Leda is a frontal portrait of Dalí's wife, Gala, who is seated on a pedestal with a swan suspended behind and to he ...

'' (1949), ''

Galatea of the Spheres ''Galatea of the Spheres'' is a painting by Salvador Dalí made in 1952. It depicts Gala Dalí, Salvador Dalí's wife and muse, as pieced together through a series of spheres arranged in a continuous array. The name Galatea refers to a sea nym ...

'' (1952), ''Crist de la Tramuntana'' (1968), and '' Dalí Seen from the Back Painting Gala from the Back Externalized by Six Virtual Corneas Provisionally Reflected by Six Real Mirrors'' (1972-73). There is also a set of works created by the artist expressly for the Museum, including the ''Mae West'' room, the ''Palace of the Wind'' room, the ''Monument to

Francesc Pujols Francesc Pujols i Morgades (1882 in Barcelona – 1962 in Martorell) was a Spanish writer and philosopher. Biography Pujols began to write poetry during his studies in secondary school, influenced by the work of Jacint Verdaguer and Joan Maraga ...

'', and the ''Cadillac plujós''. A collection of

holographic art Holography is a technique that enables a wavefront to be recorded and later re-constructed. Holography is best known as a method of generating real three-dimensional images, but it also has a wide range of other applications. In principle, it ...

by Dalí, and a collection of

jewellery Jewellery ( UK) or jewelry (U.S.) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a wester ...

he designed are on display. Another room contains a

bathtub A bathtub, also known simply as a bath or tub, is a container for holding water in which a person or animal may bathe. Most modern bathtubs are made of thermoformed acrylic, porcelain-enameled steel or cast iron, or fiberglass-reinforced ...

and a side table with an open drawer and a lamp, all of which Dalí had installed upside-down on the ceiling. An extension to the museum building contains a room dedicated to

optical illusion Within visual perception, an optical illusion (also called a visual illusion) is an illusion caused by the visual system and characterized by a visual perception, percept that arguably appears to differ from reality. Illusions come in a wide v ...

stereograph A stereoscope is a device for viewing a stereoscopic pair of separate images, depicting left-eye and right-eye views of the same scene, as a single three-dimensional image. A typical stereoscope provides each eye with a lens that makes the ima ...

s, and

anamorphic art Anamorphosis is a distorted projection requiring the viewer to occupy a specific vantage point, use special devices, or both to view a recognizable image. It is used in painting, photography, sculpture and installation, toys, and film special e ...

created by Dalí. The artist's final works, including his last oil painting, ''

The Swallow's Tail ''The Swallow's Tail — Series of Catastrophes'' (french: La queue d'aronde — Série des catastrophes) was Salvador Dalí's last painting. It was completed in May 1983, as the final part of a series based on the mathematical catastrophe theo ...

'' (1983), are on display here.

Gallery

File:Musée Salvador Dali Figueres.JPG, Museum entrance File:Catalunya en Miniatura-Torre Galatea (Museu Dalí de Figueres).JPG, Scale model, at Catalunya en Miniatura File:Teatre Museu Dalí Façana.JPG, Fantastic figures adorn the south façade File:Figueres 15.jpg, Sculpture next to entrance File:DaliMuseum1.jpg, Courtyard, with Cadillac installation at lower right File:Museu Dalí pati.JPG, Courtyard view showing figurines File:dalidome.JPG,

Geodesic In geometry, a geodesic () is a curve representing in some sense the shortest path ( arc) between two points in a surface, or more generally in a Riemannian manifold. The term also has meaning in any differentiable manifold with a connection. ...

glass cupola File:Editathon at Fundació Dalí september 2012 (31).JPG, Inside view of the copula File:Figueres 28.jpg, Roof parapet with giant eggs File:Salvador Dali Crypt in Figueres.jpg, Dalí's crypt File:Editathon at Fundació Dalí september 2012 (28).JPG, Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in the interior stage space (2012) File:Editathon at Fundació Dalí september 2012.JPG, View of stage during the Edit-a-thon (2012)

References

External links

Dalí Theatre Museum English language web page

Dalí Theatre-Museum situation map in Figueres
* Dalí - Die Ausstellung am Potsdamer Platz - in Berlin, Germany {{DEFAULTSORT:Dali Theatre And Museum 1974 establishments in Catalonia Art museums and galleries in Catalonia Art museums established in 1974 Biographical museums in Spain Buildings and structures in Figueres Former theatres in Spain Museums devoted to one artist Theatre-Museum Visionary environments Eggs in culture

Museum

Art collection

Gallery

See also

References

External links