SURREALIST SPLENDOUR SET FOR MELBOURNE IN 2009

Tuesday, 22 July 2008
The Premier John Brumby today announced that a new blockbuster art exhibition, Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire, would come to the National Gallery of Victoria in 2009 as part of the highly successful Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series.

Mr Brumby said the exhibition would draw from the holdings of the two largest Dali collections in the world – the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres, Spain and the Salvador Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, Florida.

“I am delighted to announce that Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire will be shown exclusively here in Melbourne in 2009 and attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to the NGV as previous Melbourne Winter Masterpieces collections have done,” Mr Brumby said.

“The exhibition will build on Victoria’s reputation as an international centre for the arts, be a major drawcard for the state next winter and add to the rich variety of cultural events on offer.

“It will also be the first time Australia has ever shown a full retrospective of Salvador Dalí’s works and securing it exclusively for Melbourne is an outstanding coup for our state.”

From his birth in 1904 until his death in 1989 at age 85, Salvador Dalí life spanned almost a century of dramatic social and artistic change. A full retrospective, Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire will comprise more than 200 works in all media including painting, drawing, watercolour, etchings, sculpture, fashion, jewellery, cinema and photography.
 
“Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire will follow on the success of the five Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibitions at the NGV and is part of our strategy to attract visitors during winter,” Mr Brumby said.

“The current Melbourne Winter Masterpieces – Art Deco 1910 – 1939 has been open almost a month and already almost 63,000 people have visited.  Around 1.1 million people have attended Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibitions since 2004, almost 25 per cent coming from interstate or overseas. This has generated more than $80 million to the Victorian economy.”
 
Arts Minister, Lynne Kosky, said Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire would trace the extraordinary innovation Salvador Dalí brought to his art during his remarkable career and was part of the Victoria Government’s commitment to ensure world-class exhibitions could travel to Victoria.

“Our Government created the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces to lure tourists to Victoria in winter months, a traditionally quieter time for Melbourne’s busy major events calendar,” Ms Kosky said. 

“Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire explores the life and art of one of the 20th century’s legendary eccentrics, showman and visionaries,” Ms Kosky said. “It celebrates Dalí’s extraordinary artistic output which has entered the popular imagination like few other artists have. His weird images continue to provoke and astonish. Together with the vast array of arts and cultural attractions here in Melbourne this show will further demonstrate why our city is a great place to visit.”

NGV director Gerard Vaughan said Salvador Dalí was one of the most talented artists of the 20th Century and the exhibition would surprise and delight visitors.
“Dalí was a giant of the international stage whose art influences not just his own but succeeding generations,” Dr Vaughan said.

“Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire is a kaleidoscopic and panoramic exhibition. Dalí’s genius is found across a wide spectrum, especially in painting, but also in other media that will surprise and delight visitors to this exhibition next year.”

The Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series began in 2004 with The Impressionists, continued in 2005 with Dutch Masters and followed with Picasso: Love & War in 2006. In 2007 Melbourne hosted two exhibitions with Guggenheim Collection: 1940s to Now at the NGV and Pixar: 20 Years of Animation at ACMI, and this year the NGV is holding Art Deco 1910–1939  to great acclaim.

Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire will explore the brilliance of Dalí through chronological sections with visitors first encountering the artist as an accomplished Impressionist painter in his early teens, through to his experimentation with Cubism, Abstraction, Neoclassicism and New Objectivity during his student years.

A special highlight of Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire will be the celebratory return to Australia of the artist’s 1932 painting Memory of the Child-Woman. The first Dalí painting ever seen in Australia, Memory of the Child-Woman was included in the landmark 1939 Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art organised by Keith Murdoch’s Herald newspaper which toured to Melbourne and Sydney.

Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire will open at the National Gallery of Victoria on 13 June, 2009 and run until 4 October, 2009. It will be indemnified by the State of Victoria.

The Victorian Government created the State Indemnity Scheme specifically to assist the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibitions, ensuring world class exhibitions could travel exclusively to Victoria.

In 2009, the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces Series will once again bring blockbuster exhibitions to town with the exciting new exhibition A Day in Pompeii to be shown concurrently at Melbourne Museum.