Unique exhibition of original pictures of Salvador Dali opened in Ufa

An exhibition "Sculpture and graphic works of Salvador Dali" from the private collection opened in Michael Nesterov Bashkir State Arts Museum yesterday. This collection of works of the great Spanish artist belongs to Yekaterinburg businessman Alexander Shadrin. On the opening day, he himself gave an excursion for the invited guests.

According to Alexander Shadrin, he dreamt of such a big collection for a long time. Now that his dream gas come true, he shows the wonderful world of art created by Salvador Dali to art amateurs all over Russia. The prehistory of this collection runs as follows. Alexander Shadrin, the former biology teacher, got interested in collecting in the early 1990s. Michael Shemyakin, Mark Chagall, Henry Matisse, Pablo Picasso... Works of Salvador Dali became the summit of his collection.

"I have been interested in Dali since childhood. But catalogues of his works were kept in inaccessible funds in Soviet times, and it was difficult to find them somewhere else" - Alexander Shadrin tells - "My aunt worked in the library and only owing to that I was able to get acquainted with his works".

The collections used to belong to the European Fund "The World of Dali", which is the owner of all European museums of Salvador Dali, except for Spanish museums and was founded by Dali himself in 1979. Works of Dali were collected from England, France, Switzerland and Italy. Since 1977, it has been a travelling collection - pictures of Dali were demonstrated in Japan, China, Korea. As soon as the fund stopped taking pictures out for exhibitions, Alexander Shadrin decided to buy it. After long negotiations with the fund, he finally succeeded. That is the how the collection got to Russia.

Bronze sculptures with gilt attract special attention in Ufa variant of the exposition including 64 works of Salvador Dali. Graphic part of this collection is also very interesting. It is a series of drawings devoted to fables of La Fontaine, human vices, the artist's beloved woman - Gala, surreal flowers. It is possible to look at them separately, but together they give a complete idea about basic motives and stages of Salvador Dali's creative work.

"Dali was absolutely right when he called his works as surrealism. He represents in one work of art things that can not be depicted in realism or the idea that needs a score of sculptures for its embodiment" - Alexander says - "Due to this talent of him we are able to see not the exterior but the unconscious that is hidden in a man. All over the world pictures of Salvador Dali are highly appreciated because he portrays a man as he really is and not only his appearance".

The exhibition will be open till November 15, then it will move to other Russian cities. The collector Alexander Shadrin is planning to show this exhibition to our country from Arkhangelsk to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.