Surreal exchange gives Kolkata a taste of Dali’s art

Art by Salvador Dali on display at Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata. Photo: Sushanta Patronobish

Art lovers in Kolkata now have the rare privilege of seeing two etchings by the great surrealist painter Salvador Dali.

The untitled colour etchings of the ‘Macbeth Series’, signed by the Spanish master, are on display in the Durbar Hall of the Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH). The etchings were donated by Bimal Banerjee, a New York based artist of Indian origin, in the early 1990s. The works of art that have come out of the storehouse of the VMH after nearly two decades are colour etchings on copper plates, printed on Japanese rice paper with cotton threads.

Speaking to

The Hindu over telephone from New York, Mr. Banerjee, who left India at the age of 27 in 1967, spoke about his association with Mr. Dali.

“I got the etchings from Dali in exchange for my artworks in 1972. I had presented him my artworks and he asked me to pick any two works of his from the studios in Paris,” the 74-year-old artist said.

I picked up the artworks that I liked the best. I remember getting goosebumps while making my selection,” Mr. Banerjee said.

Mr. Banerjee, who himself has used the Fumage technique (using smoke to make impressions) in his surrealist artwork, recalls having met Mr. Dali a few more times in New York subsequently.

He said that along with the artworks of Mr. Dali, he had given VMH other works of art, including those by European masters like Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico, French artist Sonia Delaunay and her husband Robert Delaunay, who co-founded the Orphism Art Movement (form of abstract art). “I have gifted 83 artworks to Victoria Memorial in the 1990s,” the eminent artist said, expressing displeasure that his “gifts” were for so long kept under lock and key and not put on display.

His contract with the VMH states that the gifts were made to “promote modern art of the West in India so that the younger generation of artists could be educated in Modern Art by seeing original works of art and not their reproduction in books”.

Jayanta Segupta, curator of VMH, said that all the artworks gifted by Mr. Banerjee would be brought out for the public after the authorities “are able to conserve them and put them together as well-curated pieces”.

“The artworks (etchings of Dali) were displayed immediately after we got it in the early 1990s; so it is not the first time they are being displayed. But it is true they have been put up in our galleries after two decades,” Mr. Sengupta added.