Tourism
Dalí Theatre-Museum / Barcelona
The world’s largest surrealist object
Inaugurated in 1974, the Dalí Theatre-Museum is considered to be the last great work of Salvador Dalí. Everything in it was conceived and designed by the artist so as to offer visitors a real experience and draw them into his unique and captivating world.
The Dalí Theatre-Museum’s collection allows the visitors to capture the artistic journey of Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) through a broadspectrum of works. The route around the rooms allows visitors to capture his first artistic experiences, surrealism, nuclear mysticism and his passion for science, guiding them tothe works of the last part of his life.
A visit to the museum is a unique experience, allowing visitors to experience and enjoy the genius’s works and thoughts. In the words of Dalí himself:
It’s obvious that other worlds exist, that’s certain; but, as I’ve already said in many other occasions, these other worlds are inside ours, they reside on earth and are precisely at the centre of the dome of the Dalí Museum, which contains the new, unsuspected and hallucinatory world of Surrealism
The place, in which the Dalinian project was to be located, as a specific wish of the artist, was the former Municipal Theatre of Figueres:
Where, if not in my own town, should the most extravagant and solid of my work endure, where if not here? The Municipal Theatre, or what remained of it, struck me as very appropriate, and for three reasons: first, because I am an eminently theatrical painter; second, because the theatre stands right opposite the church where I was baptised; and third, because it was precisely in the hall of the vestibule of the theatre where I hosted my first exhibition
The Dalí Theatre-Museum consists of three clearly differentiated museum areas offering the visitors an unguided andpersonal route across the various galleries:
- The Theatre-Museum as such, refurbished from the old fire-damaged municipal theatre. This part of the museum forms a unique artistic object in which each element is an inseparable part of the whole.
- The group of galleries resulting from the progressive extensions of the Theatre-Museum, in which Dalí’s personal intervention is superficial or non-existent. These galleries contain many works from the artist’s legacy- stereoscopic works, installations, and anamorphisms-, as well as the Foundation’s new acquisitions.
- The Dalí·Jewels exhibition rooms, inaugurated in 2001, which contain the thirty-seven gold jewels and precious stones from the former Owen Cheatham collection, in addition to two jewels made later and the prior designs made by the painter.
Some of the most outstanding works on display are Self-Portrait with l’Humanité (1923), Port Alguer (1924), The Spectre of Sex-Appeal (1932), Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder (1933), Soft self-portrait with grilled bacon (1941), Poetry of America / The Cosmic Athletes (1943), Galarina (1944-45), The Basket of Bread (1945), Leda Atomica (1949) and Galatea of the Spheres (1952), among many others.
Aside from Salvador Dalí’s works, there are works by other artists that the painter invited to be exhibited in his museum, accompanied by other artist from the painter’s own private collection. Since Salvador Dalí death in 1989, the crypt where he is buried can also be visited at the centre of the museum.
