Dalí and the Jews

The Surrealist Painter’s ‘Aliyah’ Series

At the thought of Salvador Dalí, many people envision the artist’s famously eccentric face — his wide, cartoonish eyes and the wiry mustache that seemed to defy gravity. Or perhaps his best-known canvas springs to mind, that all-too-familiar scene of watches melting in a barren landscape. According to a rising crop of scholars, however, there is more to Dalí than his outlandish personality and surrealism. These people wonder about the post-World War II Dalí — Dalí who wrote a manifesto on “nuclear mysticism”; Dalí the Catholic, the optical illusionist and, perhaps most surprisingly, the creator of Jewish art.

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