ARTIUM, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art, presents the exhibition Traces of Dalí (Upper East Gallery, until February 27), organised by the State Society for Cultural Commemorations (SECC) in collaboration with Artium and the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation. The exhibition, which forms part of the programme organised by the SECC to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Salvador Dalí, highlights the enormous influence of this Catalonian artist on Spanish art from 1927 (when he painted Aparato y mano and La miel es más dulce que la sangre) until the end of the Civil War. These “traces of Dalí” are clear, formally or semantically, in the almost one hundred pieces exhibited in Vitoria, by thirty artists including Benjamín Palencia, Moreno Villa, Maruja Mallo and Federico García Lorca, to mention just a few. Traces of Dalí is curated by Jaime Brihuega. The presentation of the exhibition in Vitoria-Gasteiz is sponsored by Gasnalsa.

As of 1927 and after experimenting broadly with a number of the different visual trends in international modernity, the work of Salvador Dalí shifted definitively in the direction of Surrealism. This is when he painted "Aparato y mano" and "La miel es más dulce que la sangre". This was the climax to a very intense learning process in which Dalí shared that poetry intimately with Federico García Lorca In 1929 and after a number of artistic experiments that struck up a dialogue with the work of Max Ernst, Arp, Tanguy, Miró and even wielded the provocative catharsis of the negation of art, his visual language finally crystallised. Truly foundational works such as "El gran Masturbador", "Monumento imperial a la mujer niña", "Los primeros días de la primavera", "El hombre invisible", and so on, are eloquent proof of this.

It was also the time when Dalí settled in París, became a former member of the Surrealist movement and a reference model, alongside Picasso, Gris and Miró, for avant-garde artists on the Iberian peninsula.

As of 1929, artistic surrealism became widespread on the Iberian peninsula to the extent that it became one of the priority lines of the artistic avant-garde up to the Civil War. Although there were many references that provided orientation for the different trends of Spanish Surrealism, the forms of Dalí were undoubtedly very important. Sometimes these took the shape of truly literal quotations, others worked like a poetic term of an intense creative dialectic. In all cases, they were strongly present in a large part of the manifestations of art on the Iberian peninsula, both in Catalonia and in the Basque Country, in Tenerife and in major aspects of the "poetry of Vallecas”, which became so widespread in Spain in the thirties.

This exhibition seeks to reconstruct the mosaic formed by these "Traces of Dalí” in the Spanish art produced between 1927 and the end of the Civil War, tracing symbolically even some of the vestiges produced in the post-war era.

To do this, this exhibition includes more than one hundred works by Alberto, Mariano Andreu, Arissa, Caballero, Castellón, Ciria, Clavé, Federico Comps, Cristòfol, Óscar Domínguez, Luis Fernández, Esteban Francés, Galvache, García Lamolla, García Lorca, Emili Godes, González Bernal, González de la Serna, Juan Ismael, Lasso, Lekuona, Dora Maar, Maruja Mallo, Marinel.lo, Josep Masana, Massanet, Margaret Michaelis, Moreno Villa, Ortiz Echagüe, Palencia, Pla Janini, Planells, Miguel Prieto, Quirós, Renau, Rodríguez Luna, Sandalinas, Jaume Sans, Pablo Sebastián, Ucelay and Viola.

The visual discourse is divided into eight chapters:

· SHARED TRACES contains the artistic works of Federico García Lorca, while sharing with Dalí the keys of the reception of Surrealism.

· The intricate dialogue with the Dalí of rocks, shells or pebbles, TRACES IN THE EARTH groups together those experiments in which Surrealism took root in a drive towards earthiness.. Or shared this with an experience of nature that sought the modern and, at the same time, differential identity of our culture.

· In TRACES IN A MIRROR we find the artistic experiments that tried to follow the teachings of Dalí more faithfully.

· TRACES IN THE AIR, by assembling a diverse range of tendencies in visual language, finds its argument in the three-dimensional occupation of space. This is, therefore, the chapter dedicated to sculpture.

· Through a wide-range of formal possibilities brought together due to their biomorphic nature, SOFT TRACES illustrates the effect of one of the most characteristic formal features of the language of Dalí.

· TRACES IN LINE presents the theme of the monochrome graphics of drawing.

· SUPERIMPOSED TRACES shows how, through collage or photomontage, our artists also conversed with the poetry of Dalí.

· Finally, TRACES IN THE LIGHT brings together those photographic works that in Spain made contact with the arguments and forms on which this exhibition concentrates.