Dali Planet #167: Caixa Forum
The march of time rescued Dali’s name from the gloom of the courtroom. In 2004, the centenary of his birth, there were retrospectives and celebrations in cities around the globe, Spain’s King Juan Carlos officially igniting “The Year of Dali” with the exhibition “Dali and Mass Culture” here at the Caixa Forum. The same show travelled from here to Madrid’s Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, the Dali Museum in Florida and Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. In September 2005 there was another huge Dali exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. The paintings here is “Celestial Ride” from 1957.
Yugoslav Dragan Matic unveiled centenary plans to stage “Etre Dieu”, an “opera-poem” written by Dali, in Barcelona.
Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca began writing the libretto in 1927 at a Madrid cafe, and in 1974 Dali recorded the opera in Paris with music by Igor Wakhevitch and additional lyrics by Spaniard Manuel Vazquez Montalban, but insisted on improvising on the text, saying “Salvador Dali never repeats himself!” I’ve been unable to find any indication online that the revival of “Etre Dieu” was realised.
