By Ranjan Kaul
The exhibition “Dali Comes to India” opened on 7 February 2025 at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, to, unsurprisingly, a massive and excited gathering. Presented by the Bruno Art Group and curated by Christine Argillet, the show features about 200 works of the legendary multi-disciplinary artist Salvador Dali (1904-1989).
The works on display comprise select etchings, water colours, and Aubusson tapestries of the artist from the prestigious collection of Pierre Argillet, Dali’s collaborator, publisher, collector, and lifelong friend. These include iconic etchings from Mythologie and Les Chants de Maldoror, and other surrealist interpretations that exemplify Dalí’s exploration of dreams and subconscious fears, and use of fantastical imagery. The collection’s permanent home is the Museum of Surrealism in Melun, France, and the Dali Museum in Figueres, Spain.
Christine is the daughter of Pierre Argillet, an avid collector of works by Futurists, Dadaists, and Surrealists. She has played a pivotal role in preserving and promoting her father’s legacy. I asked her why she’d chosen to exhibit her father’s collection in India, for the first time. She said,
“It was because Dali had a great interest in the mystical quest for the Orient and had a cross interest between eastern civilizations and western culture. I wish to show this common interest for each other.”
Best known for his renowned oil painting The Persistence of Memory (1931), with its soft, melting pocket watches against the backdrop of a twilight sky, Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was a Spanish painter born in Figueres, Catalonia, and is regarded as one of the leading Surrealist greats – a reputation he maintained in his lifetime by way of excessive exhibitionism, not least his characteristic thin, and upward-curling moustache! His influence was far-reaching and extended to film, fashion, and literature.
Trained at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, Madrid, Dali was drawn simultaneously to academicism, impressionism, futurism, and cubism, but following his reading of Sigmund Freud, his passion turned to dreams and the unconscious. After meeting Pablo Picasso and the French writer and poet Andre Breton in 1928, Dali joined the Surrealists. In December 1924, Breton had brought out a new journal, La Révolution Surréaliste, and thereafter had published his Manifesto of Surrealism that attacked contemporary cultural practices and asserted the need for a new approach to art and literature. Breton had experienced World War I as a medical orderly in a psychiatric ward where he developed a keen interest in the psycho-therapeutic techniques being applied on the inmates. This led him to embrace the Freudian notion of the “unconscious”: it offered an exciting, magical space in which the nature of human existence might be revealed. Following on the heels of Dadaism, an art movement that emerged out of disgust at the horrors and violence of World War I, the surrealists developed two principal techniques: automatism (producing an image free of rational controls without regard to aesthetic and moral concerns) and the visual representation of dreams. For representing dreams, the Surrealists were inspired by the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) who had produced The Song of Love, an oil painting where he used uncanny juxtapositions of unrelated objects – a limp surgical glove, a classic plaster head on a building, green ball, passing train– evoking a sense of gloom.
Like other surrealists such as Max Ernst and Rene Magritte, Dali drew on de Chirico’s works, introducing unrelated objects and metamorphic creatures in eerie, unreal landscapes, often in sinister settings. He himself described his approach as ‘critical paranoia’, which lent itself to automatism, the method he deployed.
Among the works of Dali on display are a series of etchings that illustrate Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror), a French poetic novel by Comte de Lautréamont that had shocking, transgressive content and delved into the dark recesses of the human psyche. The novel portrays its protagonist as a violent and perverse character who shuns humanity and conventional morality. At a very young age Argillet had been deeply impressed by Les Chants de Maldoror and years later purchased 42 plates of Dali’s etchings. This encouraged Dali and he decided to rework eight plates, adding an elaborate vision of his childhood traumas; the 50 prints were published together in 1934.
Ranging from the sketchy Memory of Music to the horrific Fragmented Body in which a tree trunk is juxtaposed with limbs and a hand chopping a body part with a knife, the etchings also include outlandish works with overtly sexual overtones, such as Crepusclar Couple, Fertile Eyes, and Desire of Softness. On view is also a macabre yet exquisite etching, The Seizure of Life, where elements of a sewing machine are jumbled up with human figures. The needle of the sewing machine is piercing the head of a lying figure while a monstrous head devours the body. The work may perhaps be seen as a manifestation of Dali’s paroxysms – he was acutely aware of the “confusing and demonic fabric of life” since early childhood, including paroxysmal experiences of inflicting cruelty on others.
A highlight of the show are 16 of Dali’s etched illustrations where he drew upon the symbolism of ancient legends from Greek mythology. Using what he called “hazard objectif” (the meaningful manifestation of chance), Dali would often start with an abstract smudge and develop the theme from there, as in Oedipus and the Sphinx. In the myth, Oedipus, during his travels to Thebes, encounters the Sphinx who poses a riddle to all who pass by and destroys those who do not answer correctly. Oedipus solves the riddle, and the Sphinx is so astounded that she kills herself by throwing herself into the sea. Based on the mythological story Zeus, the king of gods, who disguised himself as a swan to seduce Leda, Queen of Sparta, Dali's interpretation, Leda and the Swan, shows the swan's neck wrapped around the head of Leda. On some plates, Dali experimented with all kinds of uncommon tools like chisels, nails, wheels, and even a real octopus immersed in acid, which left its imprint on his Medusa.
Dali’s Saturn depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (whom the Romans called Saturn) who ate his children as soon as they were born out of fear of a prophecy by Gaea (the goddess of Earth) that one of them would overthrow him. The work is reminiscent of Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son (one of his “Black Paintings” which he painted directly on the walls of his house and was not intended for public display); however, Dali’s etching shows not one but three children and an open drawer on Saturn’s forehead, perhaps suggestive of the prophecy.
On display are 18 original etchings reworked in drypoint based on the Secret Poems by Apollinaire. Dali’s initial plan was to illustrate a number of songs by the iconic French singer-songwriter and poet, Georges Brassens (1921-1981). However, the singer’s agent recommended some specific changes that Dali was unwilling to make. Seeing a correlation with World War I, Argillet suggested that Dali illustrate instead the “Secret Poems” by Apollinaire. And so Dali reworked The Trenches and created a military ground, where time seems at a standstill, like a “soft watch” rock, as it were. From then on, the series took an unconventional, rather more surrealist turn, with enigmatic compositions: depicting a woman with ants crawling on her body (Woman at Fountain); a woman in an arched-back position with a giant snail on her waist (Woman with Snail); and an open drawer devouring a guitar (The Drawers).
Also on display are a suite of 21 original etchings published in 1968-69 that are Dali’s interpretations of the scenes of “la Nuit de Walpurgis” of Goethe’s Faust (Walpurgis Night, referring to the eve of May Day, traditionally believed to be a night when witches gather for a celebration) that appear within a “magic circle” in a chiaroscuro. (See Woman with Pig, depicting a ghoulish witch sitting atop a large-headed pig.) For some plates Dali used roulette, rubies, and diamonds as engraving tools, a technique that lent a delicacy to the creation.
Among a suite of hand-coloured, drypoint etchings published in 1970 illustrating Byron’s Don Juan is Dali’s Le Banquet (The Banquet). The work depicts a disturbing scene of a skull emerging from a figure sitting with the head on the banquet table and moths flying around lit candles on a stand.
Also included in the show is a selection of individual copper etchings created between 1960 and 1972, showcasing his brilliant, quirky imagery, and technical virtuosity. Dali was often inspired by death and the shortness of human life. See, for example, Le Vitrail (Painted Window) where Dali uses a crutch to symbolize death and the emotional and physical vulnerabilities in the various stages of life.
The Bruno Art Group has also showcased the works of Yigal Ozeri, a painter from New York. While Ozeri’s hyper-realistic paintings with breath-taking details do complement Dali’s paintings in a way, they are far removed from Dali’s vision and imaginative juxtaposition of images. Also participating in the show is a sculptor from Switzerland, Dr Gindi, who is closely associated with Dalí's creative journey and with surrealism.
Left: She that spreads the winds by Dr Gindi, Bronze, 15 x 13 x 9 in.;
Right: In reverie by Dr Gindi, Aluminium, 14 x 8 x 114 in. (photos by Ranjan Kaul)
In the ever-changing, often chaotic world, Dalí's prescient art has timeless relevance. Even today, his surreal landscapes and psychological themes reflect contemporary human struggles and resilience, complex notions of identity and mental health, the intricacies of human emotion, and the fragility of human existence. His explorations eerily echo our experiences in this digital age, where the boundaries between the virtual and the real are becoming alarmingly and irrevocably blurred.
Dates: 7 February to 13 February 2025
Venue: Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi
To be Continued: 15 February to 16 March 2025 at Massarrat by Bruno Art Group, Savitri
Cinema Complex, Opposite Lenskart, GK-2, New Delhi
(All images are courtesy of Christina Argillet unless otherwise stated.)
Ranjan Kaul is a visual artist, art writer and critic, curator, author and Founding Partner of artamour. His works may viewed on www.ranjankaul.com and his insta handle @ranjan_creates.
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