Salvador Dalí and the 1954 Venice Biennale: background, diplomatic relations and business strategies

Abstract

The article investigates the background to Salvador Dalí’s presence at the XXVII International Art Exhibition in Venice in 1954 in relation to the exhibition of Surrealism that was held there and the simultaneous realisation of the Salvador Dalí’s Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Goldsmiths, the first major Italian retrospective of the artist held in Rome, Venice and Milan. Due to this exhibition, an extensive presentation of Dalí within the Spanish Pavilion was opposed by the artist himself and his patron, count Theo Rossi di Montelera, for economic and publicity reasons. Interpreting previously unpublished documents from the ASAC - the Venice Biennale’s Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts, the complicated diplomatic game aimed at including the artist in the exhibition was reconstructed: to this end, in fact, the Biennale’s secretary Rodolfo Pallucchini involved numerous Italian and Spanish players. Finally, the affair was contextualised by looking at Dalí’s exhibition and commercial strategy in Italy in the early Fifties, with particular attention to the diplomatic relations woven in the political and social world of the time.