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Surrealist Poster

Artwork Details

Title
Surrealist Poster

Maker
Salvador Dalí
Date Made
1934
Place Made
Spain
Materials
Oil on cardboard with key
Dimensions
Image: 27 in x 15 3/4 in
Accession ID Number
2007.24
Credit Line
Collection of The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL (USA); Gift of A. Reynolds & Eleanor Morse 2007.24
Location
ON VIEW
Copyright
In the USA ©Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc. St. Petersburg, FL 2023 / Worldwide rights ©Salvador Dalí. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí (Artists Rights Society), 2023.

Supplemental material

Description

This work is among the first things Dalí produced utilizing personalized symbols for advertising purposes. It is based on an advertisement for mustard plaster (which appeared in a Barcelona newspaper on January 12, 1920), which Dalí adapted into this surrealist poster of 1934. Dalí created the poster to advertise his second one-man exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery, at which both he and Gala were present (the first was held during Nov. 1933). Dalí transformed the ad by actually painting on the original poster. Over the advertisements copy, Dalí paints in yellow cavities which he fills with his name and his trademark images - a limp watch, his childhood nurse, ants, and an enigmatic keyhole with water flowing through it. He includes a lamb chop (which resembles "The Great Masturbator") under the figure’s foot with an accompanying host of ants, and a real key that appears to fit into the painted keyhole hangs to the figure’s right.

Exhibition History:
1965, New York, Gallery of Modern Art, “Salvador Dalí, 1910-1965”
1997, Ft. Lauderdale, Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art, "Treasures from the Salvador Dalí Museum"
1998, Pittsburgh, Andy Warhol Museum of Art, “Dali at the Warhol”
2004, Barcelona, CaixaForum, “Dalí. Cultura de masses”
2005, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, “Salvador Dalí and Mass Culture”
2005, St. Petersburg, Salvador Dalí Museum, “Salvador Dalí and Mass Culture”
2012, Paris, Centre Pompidou, “Dali: Retrospective”
2013, Madrid, Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, “Dalí. Todas las sugestiones poéticas y todas las posibilidades plásticas”

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