Dali Paris Museum

DALI Paris MUSEUM

In the heart of Montmartre, ESPACE DALÍ presents the unique permanent exhibition in France entirely devoted to the master of surrealism, and more particularly to his sculptures and engravings.

Espace Dalí

11, rue Poulbot, 75018 Paris

• The largest collection in France of Dalí’s original sculptures :

Dalí’s creative genius transforms into three-dimensional sculpture, bringing forth his most famous and fantastic surrealistic images.The passion to express himself sculpturally lasted throughout his lifetime and each sculpture beholds a dalinian philosophy.
This superb collection, the most important assembly of Dalí sculptures in France, brings to light the Catalan Master’s imagination, and exhibits an unknown aspect of Salvador Dalí’s work.

• Dalí’s complete collection of rare original handsigned etchings…

… illustrating the major themes of universal literature,mythology, history, and religion. Salvador Dalí was inspired to create a vast repertoire of personalities, allegories, and unique images.

Dalí, the undisputed graphic master, undertook the enormous task of illustrating worldly and otherworldly themes in his own expressly surrealistic style. This facet of the artist’s genius is unparalleled by any other artist of the twentieth century.

• Dalí & Montmartre

The end of the 19th century saw Montmartre to be the center of artistic life, with Toulouse Lautrec (Au Moulin Rouge – 1891), Renoir (Bal du Moulin de la Galette – 1876), and Picasso (Le Demoiselles d’Avignon – 1907). Artist workshops began to flourish like the famous “Bateau Lavoir” (1907) where cubism was born.

Dalí came to live at 7, rue Becquerel, in the apartment that Paul Eluard found in 1929 for Gala.

He couldn’t miss seing the windmills, an essential aspect of the Montmartre myth and of Certvantes’ “Don Quixote, Knight errant”, which he wanted to illustrate.

In november 1956, Dalí undertook “to produce the first engravings of the Don Quixote series before the press, in the Place Jean Baptiste Clément. The master used two [rhinoceros] horns and some bread dipped in ink in the process. A short film was made to immortalize the scene. It was “to illustrate paranoically all the electric mystery of the liturgy of this scene and the moral character of the audience”.

After the second world war, Maurice Utrillo’swidow, the flamboyant Lucie Valore, the self-proclaimed Empress of Montmartre, suggested to Dalí the he became the Empreur of Montmartre ; Dalí was charmed and accepted, but the affair did not prosper.

• Surrealism

The surrealist object is one that is absolutely useless from a practical point of view, created wholly for the purpose of materialising in a fetishistic way, withe the maximum of tangible reality, ideas and fantasies having a delirious character.
Dalí’s description of his paranoiac-critical method defines his intention : "My whole ambition is to materialise the image of concrete irrationality with the most imperialistic fury of precision in order that the world of imagination and concrete irrationality may be as objectively evident, of the same consistency, of the same durability, of the same persuasive, cognoscitive and communicative thickness as that of exterior world of the phenomenal reality".

If "surrealist" means more realistic, super-, supra-, and hyper-realistic, the realist to the hilt, then Dali is a surrealist. Unlike his systematic detractors, Dali had already made a name in Spain before arriving in Paris in 1929. He even craved out his own niche with just four simple words : “Le Surréalisme, c’est moi!”

Dalí’s creative genius transforms into three-dimensional sculpture, bringing forth his most famous and fantastic surrealistic images. The passion to express himself sculpturally lasted throughout his lifetime and each sculpture beholds a dalinian philosophy. This superb collection, the most important assembly of Dalí sculptures in France, brings to light the Catalan Master’s imagination, and exhibits an unknown aspect of Salvador Dalí’s work.

Access to the Museum

By foot : follow the direction « Place du Tertre ». ESPACE DALÍ is 100 feet from the Place du Tertre.
Subway : ligne 2 (Anvers) or ligne 12 (Abbesses) + Funicular
By bus : 54 – 80 – Montmartrobus
By coach :
Located in the middle of the Montmartre village, ESPACE DALÍ is not directly accessible by coach. However, a coach stop for passengers is located at the bottom of the Butte Montmartre, on Rochechouard Boulevard, near subway Anvers.
Then, you can easily find us by going up the hill of the Sacré Coeur (by stairs or by taking the funicular).
Once at the top of the hill, go left, follow the direction of Place du Tertre.
ESPACE DALÍ is situated behind Place du Tertre. (100 feet)
15 minutes are necessary to go from Rochechouard Boulevard to ESPACE DALÍ