The Henry McBride Foundation is pleased to present a landmark piece of art of extreme historical significance, unseen by the general public since the one-man exhibition by Salvador Dali at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1934. Later in 1935 Dali undertook a work called the Poster Project using much the same images and went on to realize this project as the advertising posters for his participation in the International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris in 1936. What we offer is the original work from which this idea grew.

The exhibition for which the work in question was done was the third one-person show Dali had in New York at the Julian Levy Gallery. It was the first exhibit that Dali himself attended in America. Henry McBride, who had favorably reviewed Dali’s work and who knew the artist, suggested to him that he make a “sign” for the publicity event to be staged in Dali’s hotel room for news reporters. It was described in a Time magazine article November 26th, 1934…

“Reporters were ushered into his hotel suite which had been prepared as a visual object lesson. In the center of the room was a small table. On the table was a red plush Catalan liberty cap and a rocking chair. Balanced on the seat of the chair was a yellow shaded table lamp. There were also two six-foot loaves of French bread on the mantelpiece and a banner with a strange device, a white skull, a key, a leaf, a woman’s slipper and the letters DALI… The chair in the forest and dozens of other Dali works went on view last week at the Julien Levy Gallery”

McBride wrote a thoughtful and positive review of Dali’s show in the New York Sun while the show was open.

“The fashionable, very disputed and very difficult exhibition of the week is the Salvador Dali show in the Julien Levi Gallery. And it is not cubistic, either. It seems that perfectly straight, highly finished, beautifully colored painting can have its difficulty, too, for Señor Dali is psychoanalytic. He doesn’t paint you from the outside but from the inside. This innovation made an instant hit with the carefully chosen and extremely “advanced” assembly at the private view on Tuesday, and this in spite of the fact that psychoanalysis had been considered “out” as a dinner-table topic, these two years past”

Dali, in appreciation, gave the “sign” to McBride as a gesture of friendship. The piece is a great example of surrealism and Dali’s vision. This piece has never been exhibited since that time or included in any publication.

Henry McBride framed the gouache and kept it until his death in 1962 at 95 years old. His estate went to Maximilian H. Miltzlaff, his friend who had taken care of him for the last 25 years of his life. Mr. Miltzlaff still lives in the US, himself now over 100 years old. In 2001 he created The Henry McBride Charitable Trust – now The Henry McBride Foundation, which is dedicated in the memory of Henry McBride to the preservation of art, support of art programs in schools and art programs for disadvantaged children. The Dali Gouache was among the pieces that Mr. Miltzlaff donated to the Foundation.

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