For the closing of the exhibition titled “La Divina Commedia illustrata da Salvador Dalí” (“The Divine Comedy Illustrated by Salvador Dalí”) organised as part of the celebrations for the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, the Italian Cultural Institute in Barcelona has scheduled a lecture by Juliette Murphy, the curator of the exhibition, for the 7th of September.
The theme is the genesis and the contents of the exhibition that displays the 100 watercolours made by DalÍ to illustrate the Divina Commedia, in addition to numerous drawings and other works created by the Catalonian artist for the famous edition of the poem. In 1950, in view of the commemoration of the 700th anniversary of the birth of Dante, the Italian government commissioned this new edition of Dante’s masterpiece to Salvador Dalí. It took Dalí well up to nine years to create the 100 watercolours and the volume was published in 1963 for the collections of Salani.
The exhibition focuses on the illustrations that Dalí created by drawing inspiration from the poem, and in which the Catalonian artist’s dreamlike atmospheres combine with Dante’s political, philosophical, and religious visions, then partially interpreted in a psychoanalytic key. Dalí succeeds in maintaining Dante’s visionary atmosphere while adding his personal hallmark through his characteristic symbols and his fluid figures: the supernatural mixes with an audacious exploration of spirituality, thus creating a unique version of the Divine Comedy.
