SALVADOR DALÍ. Divina Commedia

Salvador Dalí was much more than one of the key figures of Surrealism. Painter, engraver, sculptor, but also writer and set designer, Dalí is recognized as one of the great geniuses of twentieth-century art.

It was 1949 when the Italian Government, in view of the celebrations for the 700th anniversary of Dante’s birth, which were to take place in 1965, commissioned Dalí a colossal work that included the illustration of the Divine Comedy, a project that, due to alternating events and reasons beyond the artist’s control, underwent continuous variations, never reaching completion in the form envisioned.

Dalí’s watercolors led to the creation of one hundred woodcut panels, the result of an additional five years of work involving some of the finest master engravers of the time, and the use of 3,500 woodblocks onto which the thirty-five colors of each panel were gradually applied. An extraordinary and astonishing work that both recounts the Divine Comedy and represents the synthesis of Salvador Dalí’s personal and artistic journey.

Dalí’s works create a series of imagesthat engage with surprisingnaturalness in dialogue with theotherworldly worlds imagined byDante. The artist does not simplyillustrate the Divina Commedia, butreinvents its imagery, offering a new,unexpected universe capable ofamplifying the poem’s visionary power. The result is a radically innovativevisual work, far removed from anyprevious figurative interpretation of the Divina Commedia.