Salvador Dalí was born in Figueres, Spain, on May 11, 1904. Sala Edison, the first cinema in Figueres, opened seven months later—a curious convergence that foreshadowed Dalí's enduring relationship with the cinema. The cross-fertilization of ideas, influences, and new cinematic technology created a truly modern means of artistic expression for Dalí and his colleagues; his was the first generation of artists who engaged the emergent medium as a fundamental component of their aesthetic process. The limitless capacity of the camera lens and the time-bending properties of montage liberated Dalí from the static temporal and spatial boundaries of his audacious paintings.
Un Chien andalou (1929), Dalí's first partnership with Luis Buñuel, reveals the artist's tendency toward collaboration—a fundamental quality of filmmaking. This exhibition considers Dalí's role as both a creator and a collaborator in the design of cinematic pictorial strategies that incorporate elements of Surrealism, theatricality, and motion picture technology. Dalí: Painting and Film, a selection of Dalí's paintings and drawings on view in the Museum's sixth-floor galleries, provides further insight into the artist's attraction to cinema and the ways in which the medium profoundly influenced his art.
Organized by Anne Morra, Assistant Curator, Department of Film. Dalí: Painting and Film is coordinated for MoMA by Jodi Hauptman, Curator, Department of Drawings.