Dalí Paris

Tickets and timetable

Unlike many other French museums, this one is not free for youth under the age of 26; you will probably have to pay from 9 to 12 EUR. The museum offers free entry to some exceptions, such as children under the age of 8, journalists, conference guides and people with disabilities. Nevertheless, as a student under the age of 26, you will anyways most likely get into most of the museums for free, so it is totally worth to once spend those 9 EUR on Dalí's extraordinary genius.

The museum is opened every day from 10 am to 6 pm; in the summer, in July and August, it is opened even later, until 8 pm.

You can get to the museum with metro line number 12 (direction Mairie d'Issy) and get down at the station Abbesses. Then you only have a few minutes left of walking in the historic neighbourhood of Montmartre (right next to the famous Sacre Coeur! ) and you will reach the museum.

Who was Salvador Dalí?

Even if you are not a big art enthusiast or a student of art history, you have probably seen some of his most famous paintings; you may remember the images of clocks, melting as butter or cheese on the sun, the room in the shape of a female face (Mae West) or his elephants with mosquito-like legs. Even if you have never seen Dalí's art in any other museum, you have at least heard the name or read in some history book in the art class in your high school.

But what many books forget to mention is the fact that Dalí wasn't just a painter. His imagination has spread far across the canvas, but same as many other artists, he needed some push and guidance into the new direction in which his talent could shine. It was Benjamin Levi, famous art collector and an owner of a gallery in Milan, who eventually pushed Dalí into creating sculptures. In three dimensions, the artist's crazy ideas got a new medium to be exposed to the world. Instead of just seeing his elephants on the canvas, people could suddenly see them walking around, frozen in time.

Much of this happened because of Levi. In the sixties, he owned a private gallery in Milan, Italy. He was quite successful and had an eye for the newest art: In his gallery, one could see artwork from authors such as Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró and Le Corbusier. It was only natural he soon became interested in surrealism too. He started collecting Dalí'works and soon understood that he has to push the artist into creating more sculptures in which his creativity could really shine. This was the beginning of a long and productive relationship.

Today there are around 300 art pieces in the collection that Levi has put together: paintings, sculptures, drawings and other. When you see so many of his works put together, you can really observe how much he liked to repeat and reinvent certain motifs; like a woman with drawers pulled out of her chest and genitalia, representing the subconscious and suppressed.