Florida's Dali Museum to host "Picasso/Dali, Dali/Picasso" exhibit

PanARMENIAN.Net - Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso: Together at last. For the first time, two of the 20th century's greatest artists can be assessed in direct comparison in the groundbreaking "Picasso/Dali, Dali/Picasso" exhibition, co-organized by Museu Picasso in Barcelona, Spain, and opening Saturday, Nov 8 at the Dali Museum in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, Tampa Bay Times reported.

Dali Museum director Hank Hine welcomed members of the national media to a preview Sunday, saying that although it's a "scholarly exhibition, it's accessible in its entry point and its conclusions," setting up a dialogue between the two artists and their responses to common experiences happening around them and to each other's work.

It's an elegantly arranged show with more than 100 works that give one a sense of these men, who now seem so established in their mythic reputations, as real people. Both had egos and talent that would be content with nothing short of greatness, but we see that greatness framed in human terms.

"Picasso/Dali" uses examples of subject matter (nudes, for instance), composition (cubism) and historic interests (their shared admiration of 17th century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez) to illustrate the point-counterpoint nature of their development as artists. In one striking example of juxtaposition, the hands of Picasso's first wife, Olga Khokhlova, are painted in a 1917 portrait with a monumentality and distortion that is also suggested in the hands of Dali's sister, painted in 1923. The comparisons don't suggest that they copied each other, but that they were subject to the same currents in modern art and had a keen interest in each other's work.

Picasso (1881-1973) has been paired with many artists in exhibitions through the years that have deepened our understanding of 20th century Western art's evolution. But never with Dali (1904-1989), though they had several influences in common, especially their Spanish heritage and their long, voluntary choice to live far from home. They were also united in their agony over the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, a conflict that ravaged their homeland.

Dali was a young, adoring fan when he met Picasso in Paris in 1926, by which time the older artist had claimed his fame, which he would retain for the rest of his life.

Dali, too, achieved early fame, but unlike Picasso, his reputation as a first-tier artist dimmed as he grew older. This inequality in status was likely the reason no exhibition of this kind was considered until recently. Dali's star has risen high again, making the timing of this show appropriate.

Even so, this was a difficult exhibition to organize. Hine spent about a decade trying to pull it together because he wanted this to be more than a trove of important art; he wanted it to have a cohesion that required specific works, and getting them from multiple institutions and individual collectors was complex. But it has been worth the wait.

Viewers will see many familiar works by Dali from the museum, which has the world's most comprehensive collection of the artist's works, but there are also less familiar ones. The Picasso works have been gathered by curator William Jeffett from museums such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Ontario Gallery of Art in Canada, the Menil Collection in Houston, the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid and individuals, including the Picasso family.