{"id":481141,"date":"2026-05-12T16:44:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T16:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/481141\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T16:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T16:44:17","slug":"a-new-exhibition-proves-that-fashion-was-always-on-dalis-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/481141\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Exhibition Proves That Fashion Was Always on Dal\u00ed\u2019s Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Estimated6 min read<\/p>\n

This spring, the Victoria & Albert Museum\u2019s exhibition \u201cSchiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art\u201d<\/a> is setting the world abuzz over the maison\u2019s sculptural silhouettes and boundary-pushing designs. Now, New Yorkers can also get their Surrealist fashion fix\u2014and discover the origin story of the Italian couturier\u2019s most iconic looks\u2014thanks to \u201cDal\u00ed: The Great Years, 1929\u20131939\u201d<\/a> at Di Donna\u2019s Madison Avenue gallery. Open through June 13, this exhibition is the most significant presentation of Dal\u00ed\u2019s work in New York since MoMA\u2019s 2008 blockbuster<\/a> and is the first to exclusively focus on the \u201930s, a transformative decade in the Spanish artist\u2019s life and career. During this time, Dal\u00ed formally aligned himself with the Surrealist group, established his artistic language, found the ultimate creative partner in his wife Gala, and amplified his public persona, cementing his fame for posterity.<\/p>\n

The exhibition marks two personal milestones for Emmanuel Di Donna, who founded the gallery in 2010 to focus on European and American art from 1900 to 1970, with a Surrealist emphasis. For this show\u2014the last in Di Donna\u2019s Upper East Side space before merging with Pace and dealer David Schrader to form a joint secondary-market gallery\u2014Di Donna decided to go off with a bang. \u201cEvery one of these pieces could be in a museum,\u201d he said. Indeed, several of them already are. It took 10 years for Di Donna to assemble the show of more than 30 paintings, works on paper, and sculptures, sourced from private collections and esteemed institutions, such as the Salvador Dal\u00ed Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida; the Art Institute of Chicago; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a narrow subject with a lot to say,\u201d says Di Donna of the exhibition\u2019s scope. The gallerist opted for a chronological organization, beginning with Dal\u00ed in Paris and ending with his move to New York. In between were frequent bouts of displacement due to both the Spanish Civil War and World War II, which challenged the artist\u2019s \u0153uvre and psyche and led to consequential encounters with other visionaries. Collaborations were key to Dal\u00ed\u2019s dissemination of his art, which sought to materialize the unconscious through a distinctive melding of the rational and irrational, the fantastical and the dystopian.<\/p>\n

As this influential decade (1929\u20131939) proved, fashion was a powerful vehicle for Dal\u00ed to translate his imagination into wearable art that would be seen by the masses. While many traditional artists eschewed commercial enterprises, Di Donna says Dal\u00ed harnessed its power: \u201cThe gallery walls were far from his only canvas. His art was meant to be diffused and shown, whether it\u2019s through exhibitions, publications, or fashion.\u201d Although there are no extant garments on view in \u201cDal\u00ed: The Great Years,\u201d the seeds of his celebrated collaborations with Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel are ever present.<\/p>\n

\"SurrealCourtesy of Di Donna Gallery<\/p>\n

Salvador Dal\u00ed, <\/strong>Paysage, 1931, Oil on canvas Private Collection \u00a9 2026 Salvador Dal\u00ed, Fundaci\u00f3 Gala-Salvador Dal\u00ed, Artists Rights Society<\/p>\n

Fashion became an inseparable part of Dal\u00ed\u2019s practice. Before the artist was illustrating for magazines, including Harper\u2019s Bazaar, designing store window displays, and partnering with top jewelry and fashion designers, his early work already demonstrated an interest in dress. Laden with symbolism, garments and fashionable objects habitually appear in his artwork, perhaps most famously in the melting pocket watches of The Persistence of Memory<\/a> (1931) or, more subtly, in Paysage (Landscape) (1931).<\/p>\n

On view in the Di Donna exhibition, the latter work features a diminutive pink heel with a glass of milk in it, indicative of Dal\u00ed\u2019s preoccupations with gender and sexuality. Beside the heel, a piece of fabric is draped over a branch. \u201cThe concept of hiding and revealing is extremely important in art and fashion,\u201d says Di Donna, explaining one of the reasons fashion may have appealed so deeply to Dal\u00ed. \u201cYou can\u2019t help but want to know what\u2019s behind the fabric.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shape of the heel in Paysage (Landscape) is not far from the legendary upside-down Shoe-Hat he\u2019d design for Schiaparelli\u2019s Haute Couture Winter 1937\u201338 collection\u2014but an even more direct reference to the ingenious accessory can be seen in Le Cannibalisme des objets (The Cannibalism of Objects) (1933), a work on paper at Di Donna. The title and the image of a man imbibing the inner contents of a shoe heighten the heel\u2019s fetishistic associations.<\/p>\n

Dal\u00ed and Schiaparelli\u2019s first collaborative project came in 1935 with a powder compact resembling a telephone dial. Though the artist created magazine ads for the fashion designer\u2019s lipsticks and perfumes, his most famous contributions came in the form of trompe-l\u2019oeil garments, the first of which\u2014the Bureau-Drawer Suit\u2014debuted in Schiaparelli\u2019s Haute Couture Winter 1936\u201337 collection. The idea began when Dal\u00ed gave the designer a drawing with the inscription: \u201cSuit with semi-rigid, limp drawers, fabric imitating stripped oak, drawer handles in natural oak.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ACourtesy of Di Donna Gallery<\/p>\n

Salvador Dal\u00ed, <\/strong>T\u00e9l\u00e9phone homard, 1936\/circa 77, Mixed media assemblage Private Collection \u00a9 2026 Salvador Dal\u00ed, Fundaci\u00f3 Gala-Salvador Dal\u00ed, Artists Rights Society<\/p>\n

Dal\u00ed\u2019s and Schiaparelli\u2019s following collaboration for the Haute Couture Summer 1937 collection was arguably their most renowned and controversial: the Lobster Dress. Dal\u00ed began incorporating the crustacean into his work during the early 1930s, including in an illustration for American Weekly where a man tries to put his hand on the earpiece of a phone, which has been replaced with a lobster. In 1936, the artist was commissioned by the great Surrealist patron, the British poet Edward James, to create the Lobster Telephone, also known as the Aphrodisiac Telephone, of which several versions exist. (The one on view in Di Donna\u2019s exhibition is from a planned 1970s reedition that was never realized.) For the telephone, the lobster\u2019s tail, where its sexual organs are located, is placed directly over the mouthpiece; the lobster\u2019s suggestive placement on Schiaparelli\u2019s white organdy dress is, therefore, no coincidence (and was made all the more shocking when the Duchess of Windsor wore it in 1937).<\/p>\n

Although Coco Chanel was a rival to Schiaparelli, Dal\u00ed also counted her among his closest friends. In 1938, when unable to return to Spain due to the Civil War, Dal\u00ed and Gala spent four months at La Pausa, Chanel\u2019s summer estate on the French Riviera, where she hosted many cultural luminaries. Setting up temporary studios there, Dal\u00ed produced some of his most important works, which would be featured in a highly successful exhibition at Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1939. (The gallerist was instrumental in garnering Dal\u00ed\u2019s American success; in 1932, Dal\u00ed participated in his first group exhibition in New York there; one year later, Levy flanked his first solo show.)<\/p>\n

\"ACourtesy of Di Donna Gallery<\/p>\n

Milada Mladova in Leonide Massine\u2019s Bacchanale, no. 8. Photo \u00a9 Maurice Seymore<\/p>\n

While at La Pausa, Dal\u00ed began writing the libretto and designing the set and costumes (co-designed with Chanel) for Bacchanale, a ballet he conceived for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. Due to the outbreak of World War II, the 1939 performance was relocated to New York\u2019s Metropolitan Opera House, resulting in a Ballets Russes designer having to remake the costumes. In his 1942 autobiography The Secret Life of Salvador Dal\u00ed, the artist wrote: \u201cChanel worked on my show with a wholehearted enthusiasm and created the most luxurious costumes that have ever been conceived for the theatre. She used real ermine, real jewels, and the gloves of Ludwig II of Bavaria were so heavily embroidered that we felt some anxiety as to whether the dancer would be able to dance with them on. But once more the work was to fail. The moment the war broke out the ballet company hurriedly left for America before Chanel and I had finished our work. In spite of the cables we sent to try to delay the performance the Bacchanale appeared at the Metropolitan with improvised costumes, and without my having seen even a single rehearsal!\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Di Donna captures the spirit of this important moment with the remarkable painting, Ballerine en te\u0302te de mort (Ballerina in Skull) (circa 1939), depicting a skull whose teeth form the edge of a dancer\u2019s hoop-skirt, evoking the one designed for Bacchanale. Chanel herself can be seen beside the painting in an archival photo. The exhibition additionally includes two studies for Bacchanale\u2019s scenography and costumes. Skeletons also inspired an eye-catching evening dress featuring three-dimensional bones for Schiaparelli\u2019s Le Cirque de Schiaparelli collection\u2014in 1938, Dal\u00ed gave her a drawing of a skeleton woman with a note reading: \u201cDear Elsa, I REALLY love the idea of the bones on the outside\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ACourtesy of Di Donna Gallery<\/p>\n

Coco Chanel with Dali\u2019s Ballerine en t\u00eate de mort (circa 1939)<\/p>\n

Dal\u00ed proved to be as confident as he was prophetic\u2014for his eccentric designs, many of which Daniel Roseberry has revisited in his Schiaparelli revival, still surprise and delight nearly a century after their creation. The artist once proclaimed, \u201cAnd if it is true that I love publicity, for a thousand and one reasons, all respectable, it is an undeniable fact that publicity loves me with a passion more violent than my own.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"6 min read This spring, the Victoria & Albert Museum\u2019s exhibition \u201cSchiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art\u201d is setting the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,1926,210456,366,343,18,117,19,17,201411,590,178034,210455],"class_list":["post-481141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-content-type-feature","tag-contentid-0ad152f5-c853-4728-8e84-24c1832b33bd","tag-design","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-us","tag-read_time-7","tag-shorttitle-a-new-show-about-fashion-and-salvador-dali"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116562616427435699","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}