Salvador Dalí first came to the United States in 1934.
When his ship docked in New York Harbor, the press corps was waiting.
As cameras clicked, Dalí dramatically untied a painting strapped to his chest, revealing a portrait of his wife Gala. Resting on her shoulders was a pair of lamb chops…a scene typical of his dreamlike visuals.
"So, he really came to the United States with a real understanding of mass media and exploited it from day one,” said Jennifer Cohen, director of curatorial affairs at the Dalí Museum.
By the mid 1930's, America was emerging from the depression, and people were eager for escapism, Cohen said.
"So, Dalí dovetailed with that very nicely. He was larger than life," Cohen continued.
The artist visited the U.S. often. After fleeing Spain during World War II, he and Gala stayed for eight years.
St. Petersburg became home to the Dalí Museum in 1982, thanks to the massive private art collection of Ohio industrialist A. Reynolds Morse and Eleanor R. Morse.
Dalí never got a chance to visit. He passed away in Spain in 1987.
A newer building opened in 2011 and now houses the largest collection of Salvador Dalí's work outside of Europe.
Cohen says the nation's 250th birthday is a good time to lean into Dalí's deep ties here.
"What this exhibit really takes up is how Dalí took the idea of America and changed us in the process,” she said. “You could do something other than what was conventional."
Dalí embraced American culture and its golden age of advertising.
In 1936, the luxury department store Bonwit Teller commissioned him to design a window display.
There’s a full-size replica in the exhibit, which includes a mannequin with a head made of red roses and fur fingernails. And an early prototype of his now famous Lobster Telephone — it’s a lobster on top of a telephone.
Elsewhere, monitors show clips of Dalí's appearances on American television, including from the game show "What's My Line," and as a guest on numerous talk shows.
Cohen said Dalí was a master self-promoter who amplified his eccentric public persona. And the museum organized the exhibit to reflect that.
"I like to think that the way we've displayed them makes them feel not just like documentation of his life, but actually a part of his practice,” she said.
The exhibit also features several paintings Dalí made when he lived in America.
They include one of his more famous, titled "Portrait of Gala looking onto the Mediterranean Sea," which, from a distance of 20 meters, is transformed into a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. He created the piece during America's Bicentennial.
And memorabilia includes a copy of a manifesto Dalí modeled on American ideals after the NY World’s fair rejected one of his designs.
He wrote "A Declaration of the Independence of the Imagination and the Rights of Man to His Own Madness" after censors nixed his design of Botticelli’s Venus with her head as a fish.
"He really did ultimately have a very democratic trust in the public to take in his wildest ideas,” Cohen said. “And anyone who got in the way, the middlemen of culture he called them, was going to receive his wrath."
By the 1960's, Dalí and Gala split their time between Spain and New York City, and did so for decades.
He continued his work with solo exhibitions and showings with artists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol.
Cohen said each owes Dalí a nod.
"He was absolutely so forward-thinking. Warhol, pop art, even things like performance art,” she said. “He opened the door for all of that."
And in return, Cohen said, America gave back to Dalí.
As guests exit the gallery, they can see one of his quotes painted on the wall.
It reads, "Only America had enough fresh intelligence and available energy to fulfill my hypertrophic self."
Dalí in America is on view at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg through Oct. 18.
