The exhibition is drawn from the holdings of the two largest collections of Dalí in the world: - the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres, Spain; and the Salvador Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, Florida, USA.

From his birth in 1904 until his death in 1989 at the age of 85, Salvador Dalí’s life spanned almost a century of dramatic social and artistic change. A full retrospective, the exhibition will comprise more than 200 works in all media including painting, drawing, watercolour, etchings, jewellery, sculpture, fashion, cinema and photography. It will trace the genius of Dalí from his earliest years as a 14-year-old Impressionist painter, to the final paintings, addressing science and physics, created when the artist was in his seventies.

Dalí’s artistic imagination was constantly fed by the ruggedly romantic landscapes of his native Catalonia, the vast wind-swept plains of the Empordà, and the rocky ‘otherworld’ of the Cap de Creus. These landscapes, infused with his unique imagination, informed the now-classic Surrealist paintings with which Dalí astonished the Parisian art world in the early 1930s. A strong group of paintings from the period of Dalí’s involvement with Surrealism in Paris will be included in the exhibition.

Dalí’s ties with Spain were severed with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and, with the outbreak of the Second World War, Salvador and his wife Gala relocated from Paris to the United States (where they were resident from 1940-48). While resident in the USA Dalí was actively involved with the fashion, theatre, publishing and film industries. Post-war, his art engaged with the atomic age and nuclear theory, as well as exploring a unique and personal religious mysticism.

Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire is a kaleidoscopic and panoramic exhibition that will surprise and delight visitors as it explores the life and art of one of the most colourful and influential figures of the twentieth century.

An exhibition from the collections of the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, Spain and the Salvador Dalí Museum, St Petersburg, Florida, USA. [Gallery media, 2009]