T
his is the second time in a few months that I have the pleasure of returning to London, to inaugurate an exhibition on another great Spanish painter. Last autumn we were able to admire Velázquez, and this spring we are dazzled by Dalí.
I am grateful to the Tate Modern, to the Gala-Dalí Foundation and to the good offices of the Spanish Embassy in the United Kingdom for kindly inviting me to open this exhibition, and thus giving me the opportunity to express our appreciation for the work of Salvador Dalí, one of the most emblematic Spanish artists of the 20th century.
Dalí, like Velázquez, enjoyed great fame during his lifetime, both in Spain and throughout the world. Both renewed the art of painting in their era, making an indelible impression.
In his paintings, Dalí integrated philosophical, technical and aesthetic attitudes that he himself contributed to shaping, with a personal, refined style that makes his pictorial surrealism an essential point of reference in the history of contemporary Art.
I have the satisfaction to note that this exhibition, entitled?Dalí and Film?, is the first one to be dedicated to the two-way relation developed between Dalí?s creations and the art of film making.
The collaboration between the great painter from the Costa Brava village of Cadaqués and such outstanding representatives, of widely varying styles, as Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel and Walt Disney, gave rise to landmark films in modern cinema, as?Spellbound?,?Un chien andalou? and?L?Age d?Or?, as well as to projects like?Destino?.
The exhibition we are inaugurating today contains a carefully considered selection from very different collections, including paintings, films and photographs, as well as manuscripts and drawings.
With these materials, the exhibition shows us very clearly the influence of cinema on the painter?s own creative processes, a brilliant, seminal influence that can be noticed in all the works displayed here.
Let me once again express my gratitude to all those who have made possible this extraordinary project. Among its numerous merits, it is bound to provide a further spur to the ever great interest in contemporary Spanish art among artists, academics, critics, art galleries and the general public in the United Kingdom.
Thank you very much.