The History of The Salvador Dali Museum in Florida
In the early 1940’s, Ohio businessman A. Reynolds Morse and his wife Eleanor Reese Morse made their first purchase of a Salvador Dali painting entitled “Daddy Longlegs of the Evening – Hope!” (1940) after seeing a Dali retrospective at the Cleveland Museum of Art. As the Morse’s fascination with the surrealist master led to an eventual friendship with the artist and his wife, Gala, that purchase became the first of many. Together the Morse’s collected what can be considered the most comprehensive collection of the artist works, including, “Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet’s ‘Angelus’” (1935) & “The Hallucinogenic Toreador” (1968-70).
In 1965, the couple loaned over 200 artworks for a Dali retrospective, and realized they had created a collection large enough to have its own permanent home. Until the early 1970’s, the Morse’s housed their collection in their home, before creating a museum for the artist in Beachwood, OH. The overwhelming number of visitors that came to see Dali’s works inspired the Morse’s to donate the impressive collection en bloc. Their one criteria was that the works stay together.
A Wallstreet Journal article inspired attorney James W. Martin to convince local officials that St. Petersburg, FL would be a perfect location for the collection. Housed in a marine warehouse near the bay, The Salvador Dali Museum was finally unveiled in March of 1982. Over the next 29 years thousands of visitors viewed the collection en masse before a modern state-of-the-art facility designed by Yann Weymouth opened in 2011. The collection now numbered over 2,100 works including 96 oil paintings, over 100 watercolors and drawings, glassworks, sculptures, photos & manuscripts. The pearl of St. Petersburg, The Salvador Dali Museum in Florida houses the largest collection of works outside of Dali Theater Museum in Figueres, Spain which the artist himself conceptualized in 1974.
Among the treasures the collection houses, are several stream-of-consciousness expressions in bronze which comprise what has become known as “The Clot Collection”. Biographer Robert Descharnes tells tales of Dali sitting by his pool in Port Lligat, sipping on muscat wine… very, very nude. While relaxing Dali would toy with modeling wax with his free hand, often whilst staring at the male and female beauties lying on the beach nearby. When he brought the wax figure to a level he was satisfied with, he would then hand it to Mr. Descharnes and ask that he personally bring it to gallerist Isidro Clot, who was publishing and casting the editions. The works often dealt with mythological or religious themes and exhibit the pushing and pulling of internal forces with the artist. He felt entirely free in creating abstract architectures, lengthening and shortening forms, often giggling at the results and envisioning them as towering monuments to the Gods themselves.
He once said, “The one thing that the world will never have enough of is exaggeration”.
For a list of works available by Salvador Dali, contact info@robinrile.com
The Salvador Dali Museum text by Robin Rile Fine Art
