MÄNTTÄ.- Dalí’s Gala is an installation presenting the master of Surrealism Salvador Dalí and his late output, and is based on the cook book Les dîners de Gala, which he published in 1973. Serlachius Museum Gustaf’s exhibition is a delightful tribute to an artist whose life and art are inseparable.

The Spanish artist Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) was a controversial figure whose merits as a pioneer of Surrealist art and the avant-garde are indisputably recognised. During his career spanning 70 years, he produced paintings, sculptures, graphics, installations, stage sets, jewellery, dinner plates, postage stamps, wallpapers and logos.

Dalí did not guard his output jealously; he often gave permission for commercial products based on his works. The numerous forgeries made of his art did not seem to bother him too much. So the world is flooded with his artworks, copies of them and forgeries.

Surrealist cookbook
The ageing Dalí took his art in surprising directions. In 1973, the French art publisher Felicie published in his name the cookbook Les dîners de Gala. This remarkable book has a total of 136 recipes. The recipes, obtained from the best Parisian restaurants of the time, are imaginative and luxurious. In 2016, the Germany company Taschen published a new edition of the book.

The book is illustrated with a series of Dalí lithographs, his earlier paintings, and photographs of the master himself at dining tables laden with food. The series of 12 lithographs carries the same title as the cook book, and to many people they are among the Surrealist master’s best printed works. The original cookbook is nowadays a collector’s item.

Dalí and his wife Gala also arranged imaginative dinner parties in real life. Wearing a unicorn costume, Gala once hosted a dinner in a huge bed covered with pumpkins while caressing an ocelot cub.

“We are fascinated by the ageing Dalí and the visual and cultural universe he created, which includes artworks, design objects based on them, trinkets and forgeries,” says Pauli Sivonen, Director of Serlachius Museums.

Most of the Dalí works and objects included in the installation come from the collection of the French Dalí collector Jean Amiot, who maintains his private Dalíneum museum in the small town of Beaune, situated near Dijon. A series of lithographs made by Dalí for the original cook book has been obtained from the collection of the Castellani Art Museum in the USA.

Dalí’s Gala is curated by Pauli Sivonen and Chief of Design Tarja Väätänen, who created the exhibition’s imaginative look