For the first time in history, Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter will appear
side by side with Dalí’s reinterpretation of the painting, titled The Image Disappears
DALLAS (SMU)— September 14, 2022— The Meadows Museum, SMU, will present
Dalí/Vermeer: A Dialogue, an exhibition tracing the influence of 17th-century Dutch
master Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) on Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí
(1904–1989). For the first time in history, Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter
(c. 1663) will appear side by side with Dalí’s reinterpretation of the painting, titled The
Image Disappears (1938). On view from October 16, 2022, through January 15, 2023,
the exhibition represents a unique opportunity for viewers to contemplate these two
works in tandem, thanks to loans from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the
Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres, Spain, which displays Dalí’s painting in the
Teatro-Museo Dalí.
Dalí first became familiar with Vermeer as a youth through the black-and-white images
in a small book he owned featuring the Dutch artist’s work. Dalí used these diminutive
monochromatic images to make copies of Vermeer’s paintings in his own style, long
before he was able to travel to Paris and Brussels to see them in person. The Surrealist
visual language Dalí developed over his career incorporated myriad references to
Vermeer, including quotations of recognizable figures, fashions, and postures from the
Dutch painter’s oeuvre. Dalí admired Vermeer’s precise technique, use of light, and
ambiguous subject matter, all qualities evident in Woman in Blue Reading a Letter.
“With this exhibition we can, for the very first time, examine a particularly compelling
instance of Salvador Dalí’s great reverence for Johannes Vermeer,” said the museum’s
director ad interim and curator, Amanda W. Dotseth. “That one of the Dutch painter’s
few surviving paintings will be on view in Dallas is remarkable. We are deeply indebted
to the Rijksmuseum and to the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí for their generous loans.
This exhibition proves how palpable Vermeer’s impact was on the famed Spanish
Surrealist.”
In 2016, the Meadows exhibition Dalí: Poetics of the Small, 1929–1936 shed new light
on Dalí’s longtime obsession with Vermeer’s work. The upcoming exhibition takes a
closer look at the nature of artistic imitation by uniting Vermeer’s Woman in Blue
Reading a Letter and Dalí’s The Image Disappears. Thanks to a side-by-side display of
the two paintings, this focused exhibition offers an extraordinarily rare opportunity to
observe how Dalí infused his own unique artistic vision into the themes, techniques,
and compositions he borrowed from the Dutch painter. Dalí translates Woman in Blue
Reading a Letter by manipulating and redeploying its basic forms and elements,
resulting in one of his signature “double images.” In The Image Disappears, one can
still see Vermeer’s woman reading a letter, but Dalí trades the luminous blues of
Vermeer’s palette for muted earth tones, and distorts the figure of the woman in such a
way as to simultaneously depict the profile of a man: her head becomes an eye; her
upper torso, a nose; her arm and letter, a mustache; and her skirt, a beard. Vermeer’s
image of a woman thus fades and reemerges as a portrait of another artist Dalí greatly
admired: the Spanish baroque painter Diego Velázquez.
This exhibition has been organized by the Meadows Museum and is funded by a
generous gift from The Meadows Foundation. Promotional support is provided by the
Dallas Tourism Public Improvement District.
The Meadows presents the following educational programs in conjunction with the
exhibition Dalí/Vermeer: A Dialogue. For more details, visit
https://meadowsmuseumdallas.org/program-calendar/.
GALLERY TALK
Monday, October 21 | 12:15 pm
Imitation or Innovation? Dalí’s Rendition of Vermeer’s Woman Reading a Letter
Shelley DeMaria, art historian and curator
Free with regular museum admission
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gallery-talk-imitation-or-innovation-tickets-
404239018787
MOVIES WITH THE MEADOWS
Thursday, November 10 | 6:00 pm
Vermeer, Beyond Time (2017), directed by Guillaume Cottet and Jean-Pierre Cottet
Screening followed by short talk by Nancy Cohen Israel, docent programs manager,
Meadows Museum
FREE
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/movies-with-the-meadows-vermeer-beyond-
time-tickets-381872259207
DOUBLE LECTURE
Thursday, December 1 | 6:00 pm
Dalí & the Pursuit of Vermeer
Esmée Quodbach, independent art historian, Princeton, New Jersey
Danielle M. Johnson, director of curatorial affairs, Eskenazi Museum of Art at
Indiana University
Panel discussion moderated by Amanda W. Dotseth, curator and director ad interim,
Meadows Museum
$10; free for museum members and SMU faculty/staff/students
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/in-person-double-lecture-dali-the-pursuit-of-
vermeer-tickets-381795930907
MOVIES WITH THE MEADOWS
Thursday, December 8 | 6:00 pm
Salvador Dalí: In Search of Immortality (2018) directed by David Pujol
Screening followed by short talk by Nancy Cohen Israel, docent programs manager,
Meadows Museum
FREE
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/movies-with-the-meadows-salvador-dali-in-
search-of-immortality-tickets-381875047547
About the Meadows Museum
The Meadows Museum is the leading U.S. institution focused on the study and
presentation of the art of Spain. In 1962, Dallas businessman and philanthropist Algur
H. Meadows donated his private collection of Spanish paintings, as well as funds to start
a museum, to Southern Methodist University. The museum opened to the public in
1965, marking the first step in fulfilling Meadows’s vision to create “a small Prado for
Texas.” Today, the Meadows is home to one of the largest and most comprehensive
collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. The collection spans from the 10th to the 21st
centuries and includes medieval objects, Renaissance and Baroque sculptures, and
major paintings by Golden Age and modern masters.
#
CONTACTS:
DALLAS NEW YORK
Becky Mayad – Mayad Public Relations Kat Harding – PAVE Communications & Consulting
becky@mayadpr.com kat@paveconsult.com
214-697-7745 440-759-8148
MADRID
Julián Hernández
julian.hdez58@gmail.com
- 34 630 963 735
IMAGES:
https://smu.box.com/s/0lxln0975b2d4gog9iypq1zvrlv1jxfk
