Horst P. Horst and Salvador Dalí
Study for “Dream of Venus”
1938
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Physical Qualities
Gelatin silver print with black opaque watercolor, Image: 253 × 202 mm. (9 15/16 × 7 15/16 in.)
Credit Line
Purchase with exchange funds from the Edward Joseph Gallagher III Memorial Collection; and partial gift of George H. Dalsheimer, Baltimore
Object Number
1988.286
The sensational Dream of Venus pavilion that Salvador Dalí created for the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens, New York, introduced many a visitor to Surrealism. Its biomorphic,
irregular, bulbous plaster exterior, complete with limb-like protrusions, contained an elaborate grotto featuring a nude Venus sleeping on a giant satin bed; her dream was acted out in a nearby aquarium by scantily-clad beauties (or “liquid ladies,” as Dalí called them). This hand-colored photograph, which Dalí made in collaboration with fashion photographer Horst P. Horst, is a study for one of the revealing finned and spiked costumes worn by the models and actors who inhabited the multi-media underwater fantasy world.
Robert Miller Gallery, New York, July, 1985
Salvador Dali and Mass Culture
Looking through the Lens: Photography 1900-1960
Horst: Photographer of Style
Dilys E. Blum, 'Shocking! The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli,' Philadelphia Museum of Art: 2003, p. 145, ill.
Greeley, Robin Adele, Samantha Kavky, Oliver Shell, and Oliver Tostmann. "Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s." New York, NY: Rizzoli Electa in association with The Baltimore Museum of Art and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 2018, ill.
Julian Levy, Memoir of an Art Gallery, 1977. (Chapter on Dream of Venus) Nissan N. Perez, 'Dali, Horst and the Dream of Venus', The Israel Museum Journal, Vol. 3, Spring, 1984, pp. 52-57. Dickran Tashjian, A Boatload of Madmen Surrealism, New York: Thames and Hudson Inc., 1995, pp. 56-65.
Inscribed: IMAGE FACE: LRC (gouache, surrounded by crown) 'GALA/S. DALI/1939.'; VERSO: four white labels, top to bottom 'Neuberger Museum', 'LOWE Art Museum', 'Private Collection', 'The Grenoble Collection'; UL (black ink) '3238/Bill'
