ART EXHIBITION: Bible stories on the prints of Salvador Dalí and Otto Dix

Dear art lovers!

On the occasion of the International Museum Day, the Gallery – Museum Lendava and the Municipality of Lendava kindly invite you to the opening of the exhibition entitled

Bible stories on graphic sheets
by Salvador Dalí and Otto Dix,

which will take place on Sunday, 18 May 2025, at 7 pm at the Lendava Castle.

Guests will be introduced by
Dubravko Baumgartner, Director of the Gallery – Museum Lendava
and Janez Magyar, Mayor of the Municipality of Lendava.

An expert presentation of the exhibition will be given by
Dr. Marjeta Ciglenecki, art historian.

The exhibition will be opened by H.E. Sylvia Groneick,
Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Republic of Slovenia
and H.E. Javier Herrera García-Canturri, Ambassador
of the Kingdom of Spain to the Republic of Slovenia.

Musical programme: Tjaša Čerič (accordion)

The exhibition will be on display until 31 October 2025.

Bible stories on graphic sheets
by Salvador Dalí and Otto Dix

Salvador Dalí (1904 – 1989) and Otto Dix (1891 – 1969) were very different both artistically and ideologically, yet biblical stories with their distinctive iconography were an important influence on the work of both. Dalí turned to them in the second half of the 20th century, when he converted to the Church with full commitment, while Dix was a devoted reader of the Bible from childhood and recognised the stories from the Book of All Books everywhere in his own environment, burdened by two world wars and Nazism.

The surrealist Salvador Dalí is considered a controversial artist who, with his eccentric lifestyle and clear political definition of the Franco regime in post-war Spain, earned a lot of resentment, but with the passage of time he is increasingly recognised as a great artist. He longed for immortality and sought to discover the recipes for eternal life in the writings of ancient, medieval and modern alchemists. He was inspired by the High Song of the Old Testament and John Milton’s mid-17^th century masterpiece Paradise Lost, and he was also an admirer of the Spanish mystics, especially St John of the Cross, a 16^th century Carmelite who painted the image of the Crucified in an unusual perspective. Dalí was occupied for a decade by a tiny drawing from the saint’s bequest.

Otto Dix had a very different life path. The horrific images of the First World War followed him until his death and dictated his painting and graphic work. He was convinced that the truth should always be told, that nothing should be embellished. He was an expressionist and one of the strongest exponents of the German New Reality, which led him to lose his professorship at the Dresden Academy in 1933 and earned him the opprobrium of the Nazi authorities, who confiscated many of his works. Dix believed that artists could not change the world, but they had a duty to bear witness to it. He showed how terrible wars are in many works, including a series of 33 lithographs from 1960, which draw on the Gospel of Matthew for their subject matter, but are really about Nazism and the Second World War. The last sheet in the series shows a man with a contemporary appearance, who, with a clear gesture, commands that all peoples must be taught, using the words with which Christ sent the apostles into the world to proclaim the Christian faith.

The works selected for the exhibition are from the renowned private collection of Richard H. Mayer in Bamberg.

The exhibition opening event is photographed and recorded.