On July 15 Brukenthal Palace will open its gates to the admirers of Surrealism. Besides the importance of Salvador Dalí’s work in Sibiu, the exhibition organizers, Brukenthal National Museum and Euro Art Luxembourg, ought to emphasize the novelty factor of the exhibits and their special relevance in relation with artist’s creation. That is why the exhibition is not only a special event but also a stage in the rediscovery process of Salvador Dalí, a process that was initiated at the end of last century and continues until present through the eyes of each and every one of the on-viewers.

Text from Thomas Emmerling, Euro Art curator: At the time of Salvador Dalí’s death, in January 1989, large groups of individuals with an interest in art remembered only his escapades, the scandals around him, the extravagances and abuses in which he indulged himself. Best known of his works were the oil paintings, largely reproduced in art calendars and posters and acquisitioned by the greatest national museums and galleries of the world. The "melting pocket watches", the "crutches", the "spider-legged elephants", the monstrous bodies made of soft materials and the skulls melting like omelet, these seem to be the mark-features of the great master of the surrealism, the manner that spontaneously reveal him as familiar to us. On the other hand, Dalí’s engravings in print are less known to us while those dealing with the artistic production rather refused to involved themselves with his graphic creation after a large quantity of fakes and pour quality reproductions erupted in early 80s along the popularization of his work world-wide. The time since allowed a systematic cataloguing of the graphic work though and the elimination of fake productions (easily recognizable, otherwise), an endeavor assumed by Lutz Löpsinger and Ralf Michler who issued in 1995, at Prestel Publishing, the two volume catalogue on Dalí’s engravings. The Löpsinger & Michler catalogue is minutely describing and illustrating all the graphic works known as artist’s legacy and that is how the genuine was differentiated from the false in a certain manner. The graphic printed creation of the surrealist genius comprises a self-defining world, self-enclosed and individualized in the context of creation, meant to attract inside every person willing to persevere in studying it closely. When compared to the oil paintings, Dalí’s engravings, lithographies and woodcuts, envisage to the on-viewer the abundance of information of a literary, philosophical and natural-sciences extraction from centuries past to his contemporary times. In this respect, Dalí joins the group of great artists who illustrated the above mentioned thematic domains especially through the means of graphic works, if we are to only mention here Rembrandt’s engravings, Dürer’s woodcuts, Picasso’s lithographies but also the numerous illustrators of literary works in the past centuries among which Dore, Johannot and Fragonard. From the revolutionary discovery of the printing press by Gutenberg since present, the literary and philosophical ideas influenced and marked the individual, determined wars and made reconciliation possible, instigated uprisings and found the way to contemplative peace that led to the self-awareness. Since his early artistic stages, Dalí discovered the world of graphics as a source to providing a unique possibility to reach a wide group of people and convinced them for his art and his ideas. Reminder: The Salvador Dalí, Divina Commedia will be opened for the first time in Romania, in Sibiu, at Brukenthal National Museum – Brukenthal Palace, 1st floor and will present 100 pieces of wood-cut engravings, coloured, representing the illustration for Divina Commedia by Dante Aligieri,from the edition of Joseph Fôret, Paris 1960, structured in accordance with the three narrative patterns: Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. The pieces (first print) are only originals according to the list of works of Löpsiger/Michler Bd. II, Prestel-Munich-New York, 1995. The exhibition will be opened until September 15.