ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency
An exhibition featuring more than 100 works by peerless Spanish artist Salvador Dali attracted a record number of visitors to Ankara’s Cer Modern Center, according to the museum’s press relations manager.
“We expected to see lots of visitors, but the figures show that the interest is more than we expected,” said Sara Adıbelli. “Cer Modern has opened a new page in the cultural and artistic life of Ankara.”
Some 40,000 people came to the exhibition, with 2,500 people typically coming to see Dali’s work on weekends, she said.
“Many people, both young and old, visited the museum. This is such good news for us because we want a diverse visitor profile. Many visitors also came from other cities near Ankara, such as Kayseri, Mersin, Adana and Eskişehir.”
Many different people who had never come to a museum before traveled to see the Dali exhibition, Adıbelli said.
The traveling exhibition, which was previously in Istanbul, includes 121 lithographs and watercolors from Dali’s print series “The Divine Comedy,” “Traces of Surrealism” and “Dinner with Gala,” which critics regard as exemplary of his symbolist and surrealist style. The series consists of 100 prints, one print for each canto of Dante’s epic poem “Divine Comedy,” plus one cover print. “Traces of Surrealism” is made up of nine lithographic color printings that were made by Dali in Paris in 1971. The surreal atmosphere in the works provides images of a plastic universe that critics say makes it impossible to separate dream from reality. Dali’s main goal was to convert the everyday life to the home of “dream” in a sarcastic manner.
Dali’s “Dinner with Gala” series features 12 colored lithographs. Dali had wished to become a chef since childhood and finally realized this dream at the age of 68. This series includes the menus and recipes of legendary restaurants and chefs, as well as their surrealist gastro-aesthetics stories.
The exhibition started March 23 and ended late last month.
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