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Salvador Dali
The God of the Bay of the Roses, 1944
The enigmatic, "surreal" dreamscapes of Spanish painter Salvador Dali have always held special appeal for Americans. From of 1932 New York display of his iconic The Persistence of Memory (Museum of Modern Art) and his infamous "Dream of Venus" pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair to his notable work in 1940s Hollywood. Dali popularized surrealism as both an artistic style and fashion and design trend in this country. A number of artists, rejecting the dominance of social realism and American-scene painting in these years, embraced Dali's bizarre imagery. Their experiments with surrealism and its subset, magic realism, which were partially derived form the Spanish painter's visual puzzles, are on view nearby.
The God of the Bay of the Roses pays homage to the artist's Russian-born wife and muse, Gala, whose portrait appears on the bifurcated sculptor's pedestal, encircled by a bevy of revelers. Like the most hypnotic of Dali's work, it suggests a portal into another world. The painting dates from the couple's residency on the West coast, one year before the artist worked with films director Alfred Hitchcock on the famous nightmare sequence in Spellbound. |