Dali's "Aliyah" Opens to Great Acclaim

The new exhibit of original works by Salvador Dali called "Aliyah, the Rebirth of Israel" opened on Thursday to great acclaim. Dali expert and guest curator of the recent exhibit at The High Museum, "Dali: The Late Works," Elliott King, presented an insightful commentary on Dali's life and works to an audience of students, faculty and community.

King described the images in the Aliyah suite as reflecting a kind of "defiance" in portraying the rebirth of Israel.

“These images of defiance reflect the resiliency of the Jewish people -- of not only surviving but thriving against all odds,” Hillel Director Michael Rabkin said. “The kind of vibrancy that we see in Dali's paintings captures the essence of that resilience and vibrancy even today in our community in Atlanta and America and also Israel.”

Opher Aviran, the Consul General of Israel to the Southeastern U.S. - one of the primary sponsors of the exhibit - joined in opening the exhibit. College senior, Sarah Green, an art history major and president of Emory Students for Israel (ESI), introduced Elliott King. ESI included the opening of the Dali exhibit as part of their "Israel Peace Week" initiative at Emory.

Emory Professor David Blumenthal opened the event with a stirring recollection of how he came to acquire this suite of lithographs. From the article in today's Emory Wheel:

Blumenthal started the reception with the romantic story of how he came by the lithographs. When he and his wife were dating, he took her to a museum in New York to see a Dalí Exhibit.

“Two years later, in 1967, Dalí was working on a series of pieces of art on the theme of Zionism, the theme of the rebirth of Israel,” Blumenthal said.

His wife, Ursula, bought the set for him in the early 1980s. Until now, it had remained in its original box under their piano. It wasn’t until last spring that Ursula decided these pieces would make a great complement to The High Museum of Art’s “Dalí: the Late Work” exhibition and would also serve as a way to honor the new Hillel Center.

“It is what I, as a professor of Jewish studies, consider to be the fusion, in the finest sense of the word, of Jewish civilization and the humanities in general,” Blumenthal said.

The exhibit is on display at the Marcus Hillel Center until June 2011. An audio guide, which can be downloaded for free from iTunes U to an iPhone or iPod Touch, is available with commentary on each of the 25 framed lithographs. For more information, visit www.emoryhillel.org/dali.

Photos from the opening are after the break.

© Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2011. Photography by Daniel Weiss.