Dalí was a multifaceted artist: he was a painter, sculptor, draughtsman, engraver, interior designer and creator of advertising logos; he also designed sets for the theatre and cinema, he worked with Buñuel on a film, he wrote several autobiographic works and treatises on art, as well as theoretical works, and he was also an excellent landscape gardener. To achieve all of this, he worked ceaselessly.
Dalí's gardens serve as a support or a pretext for expressing certain concerns about gardens in particular and landscape gardening in general. At the same time (and though this might seem paradoxical) these gardens contain some of the answers to the questions we might ask. This contradiction is also a way of understanding better the supposed discordance in Dali's ideas, which delight in putting together apparently opposing questions.
Many gardens are works of art. The three that Salvador Dalí created are also works of surprising art, places of experimentation, which – unlike his other works – have not been granted the importance they deserve. This is not helped by the fact that a garden is a transitory, changing creation, especially when the tenacity of the gardener who created it begins to wane.
Cycle: Gardens and Creators in 20th-Century Catalonia
Organized by: Residence for Researchers
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