A Surrealist Between Masters and Madness
Rome is once again in dialogue with genius. Palazzo Cipolla’s new exhibition, Dalí. Revolution and Tradition, running from October 17, 2025 to February 1, 2026, brings Salvador Dalí back to the Italian capital for the first time in over a decade – and this time, it’s personal.
Curated by Carme Ruiz González and Lucia Moni under the scientific direction of Montse Aguer, the show dives deep into the paradox that defined Dalí’s life: his urge to break from tradition, and his equally obsessive need to master it.
A Dialogue with Giants
The exhibition unfolds in four luminous sections, each dedicated to one of Dalí’s chosen “teachers”: Picasso, Velázquez, Vermeer, and Raphael. These aren’t just references; they’re conversations across centuries.
Picasso embodies revolution, the chaos and creation of the avant-garde. Dalí’s early works breathe in the fractured geometries and emotional violence of Cubism, but where Picasso deconstructs, Dalí reconstructs. As he once said, “You must be revolutionary when young, only so you can enter the tradition with legitimacy.”
Then come the masters of balance and light. Velázquez’s royal realism, Vermeer’s quiet precision, Raphael’s divine harmony – all become raw material for Dalí’s dreamscapes. His reinterpretations of Las Meninas or The Lacemaker shimmer between reverence and rebellion. In their company, Dalí looks less like a surrealist madman and more like a Renaissance painter possessed by Freud.
Between Madness and Method
One of the exhibition’s most fascinating aspects is how it traces Dalí’s evolution from the provocateur of the 1930s – experimenting with surrealist imagery and Freudian symbolism – to the self-proclaimed “savior of modern painting.” His mystical phase, after his return to Spain and his years in the United States, becomes a meditation on the divine geometry of the world. There’s math in his madness: the golden ratio, stereoscopic illusion, the symmetry of atoms and angels.
The show doesn’t shy away from Dalí’s contradictions: his flair for performance, his obsession with immortality, and his devotion to craft. Through paintings, sketches, photographs, and even stereoscopic experiments, you watch him wrestle with the very question that drives all art – Is the artist bigger than his art, or is the art bigger than the artist?
The Eye of the Soul
Stand before The Woman in Blue Reading a Letter or the surreal Elements Enigmatic in a Landscape, and you’ll understand what Dalí meant by the “eye of the soul” – his ability to see beyond the visible. His colors are feverish, his forms elastic, but beneath every melting clock and endless desert lies the discipline of someone who worshipped Raphael as much as he worshipped dreams.
A Must-See of the Season
Organized by Fondazione Roma in collaboration with the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, the exhibition is more than a retrospective – it’s an argument. Dalí wanted to save modern art from chaos and laziness, and Revolution and Tradition makes a convincing case that he did.
Whether you’re a surrealism fanatic or someone who still thinks Dalí is just the guy with the mustache and the melting clocks, this exhibition will shake your idea of what modern art really means. It’s a rare chance to see how a painter who flirted with the absurd ultimately found beauty – and salvation – in the old masters.
From October 17, 2025 to February 1, 2026
Museo del Corso – Palazzo Cipolla
Via del Corso, 320
Opening times: Mon 3pm-8pm; Tue-Wed 10am-8 pm; Thur-Fri 10am-9pm; Sat-Sun 9am-9 pm
Tickets: from €10 –18
