Tartu Art Museum's original Salvador Dali sketch to go on public display

Estonia's only original work by surrealist artist Salvador Dali will go on display in an exhibition at the Estonian National Museum to mark the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto.
The sketch belongs to Tartu Art Museum and has been in its collection since 2010. It has not been on public display since then.
"By pure coincidence, we have one of Salvador Dali's "Demons" in our own collection. It's a tiny print and, as far as we know, it's the only Dali work in Estonian museums. When we think of Dali's oeuvre, it is not this kind of big gorgeous painting, unique copy, etc. It is just a small piece of art. But in our minds it is still a very nice find," Johanna Hoffmann, director of the Tartu Art Museum, told Monday's "Ringvaade".
"At the moment, it's difficult to bring masterpieces from the West: There is a war in Ukraine, it's all very expensive. In that sense, it made our life a lot easier that we could just take it from our collection and put it on display," she said.
The sketch was given to Tartu Art Museum in 2010 by Estonian expatriate artist Ville Tops. The work, created in 1967 and titled "Demons" is in very good condition, Hoffmann said.
She said Tartu has also been Estonia's center of surrealism.
"The roots of all the groups and the artists who are somehow connected to surrealism, not all of them, some are in Tallinn, but the focus is still in Tartu, the spirit and subconsciousness of the university city. Tallinn has been much more rational because of that," she added.
Although the exhibition also shows the works of Eduard Wiiralt (Viiralt) and Karin Luts from the time of the first Republic of Estonia, so-called programmatic surrealism arrived in Estonia after World War II. Artist Ülo Sooster is well known for his surrealist work.
"He worked from abroad, first he was in a prison camp in Russia for a long time after his studies and when he returned to Estonia with his wife Lidia Serhi, who he met in the prison camp, they could not become members of the Artists' Union in Estonia, which means you cannot buy paints, you cannot go to an exhibition. And they moved to Moscow, where Sooster became an important part of the Moscow avant-garde," Hoffmann said.
However, Sooster remained in active contact with Estonia, often visiting Tallinn and Tartu, where he encouraged Estonian artists to engage in more innovative art.
Hoffmann singled out Ilmar Malin as one of the other most important Surrealists in Estonian art history.
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Editor: Rasmus Kuningas, Helen Wright
Source: Ringvaade