Dali Planet #17: Dalmau Galleries
“Self-portrait with the Neck of Raphael” may have been among the eight works Dali showed in January 1922 as part of a Catalan Students Association group exhibition at the Dalmau Galleries on Barcelona’s Carrer de la Portaferrisa. Below are two other self-portraits also from 1921. Josep Dalmau opened the gallery in 1912, soon after hosted an exhibition of cubist art and even showed Marcel Duchamp’s celebrated “Nude Descending a Staircase”.
Dali was ascending with his art, but in October 1923 was suspended from the academy for a year when he fomented a student rebellion against the appointment of a “mediocre” professor of painting. During his downtime Dali returned to Figueres and, with a press purchased for him by his father, learned to make prints. His father also got him thrown in prison: Dali Senior’s political activities resulted in his apolitical son’s arrest, by way of reprisal, and Salvador spent 30 days in a Girona jail. His “criminal record” only came to light in 2004 when the prison archivists were doing some housecleaning.
In November 1925 Dalmau gave Dali his first solo exhibition and Picasso came to see it, and left full of praise.
