Salvador Dalí: Soft Watches, Surrealism and Fukushima
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Artist entry · Surrealism · Spain
At 8:45 in the morning on 11 May 1904, on the first floor of Carrer Monturiol 20 in Figueres, near the French border of Catalonia, Salvador Dalí was born. He trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, joined the Surrealists in Paris in 1929 and two years later painted three soft watches on a canvas barely 33 centimetres wide. He belongs in our Artists A to Z because the only museum in Asia built around his work stands beside a volcanic lake in Fukushima.
At a glance
| Born | 11 May 1904, Figueres, Catalonia, Spain |
|---|---|
| Died | 23 January 1989, Figueres; buried in the crypt of the Dalí Theatre-Museum |
| Training | Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, Madrid |
| Movement | Surrealism, joined 1929 |
| Main media | Oil painting, drawing, prints, sculpture, film, jewellery |
| Key work | The Persistence of Memory, 1931, oil on canvas, 24.1 × 33 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York |
| Partner | Gala, married 1934 |
| Where to see him in Japan | Morohashi Museum of Modern Art, Kitashiobara, Fukushima, opened 1999; about 340 works |
Chronology
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1904 | Born in Figueres on 11 May |
| 1929 | Joins the Surrealist group; makes Un Chien andalou with Luis Buñuel |
| 1930 | Formulates the paranoiac-critical method |
| 1931 | Completes The Persistence of Memory in August |
| 1932 | The painting causes a sensation in New York in January |
| 1934 | Marries Gala; first visit to the United States in November |
| 1940 | Leaves Europe for the United States |
| 1948 | Settles again in Spain |
| 1989 | Dies in Figueres on 23 January |
| 1999 | The Morohashi Museum of Modern Art opens in Fukushima |
The method: precision in the service of confusion
Dalí painted dreams with a miniaturist's brush. The year before the soft watches he set out his paranoiac-critical method, a way of cultivating deliberate hallucination so that one form could be read as another. He said he painted with "the most imperialist fury of precision" in order to "systematize confusion". In The Persistence of Memory the cliffs are the real coast of Catalonia, three watches droop from a branch, a ledge and a sleeping profile of the painter himself, and ants crawl over the only closed watch.
The picture was shown in Paris in the summer of 1931 without finding a buyer, then caused a sensation at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in January 1932, where the dealer called it ten by fourteen inches of Dalí dynamite. From then on, the soft watch was a logo as much as a motif, which explains its long life on posters and clothing. For a Japanese artist who turned dream imagery into graphic pop, compare Keiichi Tanaami's goldfish and searchlights.
A museum by the five-coloured lakes
The Morohashi Museum of Modern Art opened in 1999 in Kitashiobara, inside Bandai-Asahi National Park near the Goshiki-numa ponds, with Mount Bandai behind it. It grew from the collection of Teizo Morohashi, founder of the sporting goods company XEBIO, who began buying Dalí's work in 1991; building started in 1997 and finished the following year. The holding runs to about 340 Dalí paintings, sculptures and prints, which makes it the third largest Dalí museum in the world after St Petersburg in Florida and Figueres itself, alongside works by Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse and Picasso.
A practical note for travellers: the museum's own notice of 22 October 2025 says it is closed for an extended period until April 2027, so plan a visit for the 2027 season. Its website address, dali.jp, is a fair summary of its priorities.
How to read a piece
- Signed prints need a paper trail. For any print offered as signed, ask for the publisher, the paper, the edition number and a photograph of the margins before anything else; our authenticity and condition guarantee explains how we report them.
- Clothing is dated by its maker. The Clones long-sleeve T-shirt with a Dalí portrait is a garment with a printed image, dated by its tag and print; the American casual shelf holds its company.
- Look at the print, not the name. The 1990s Dalí art T-shirt with a bottle and glass print carries a reproduction of a still life. Period tags and hem construction can help place such shirts; a modern soft-hand digital print points the other way.
Where the record differs
The soft watches have two origin stories. Dalí said they came from a very ripe Camembert he had watched melt, "the camembert of time" in his phrase; some historians have suggested Einstein's theory of relativity instead, a reading Dalí himself denied. We give his own account first, because it is the only one he endorsed, and note the other as an interpretation.
Answered plainly
Where can I see Dalí in Japan?
At the Morohashi Museum of Modern Art in Kitashiobara, Fukushima, which holds about 340 of his works. The museum has announced a long closure until April 2027.
How big is The Persistence of Memory?
Small: 24.1 by 33 centimetres, oil on canvas. It hangs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it has been since an anonymous gift.
Is a Dalí T-shirt an artwork?
No. It is a garment printed with a reproduction. Collectors value the good ones for their period tags, print quality and the image chosen.
Where next
- Bridge: how this artist fits the wider story of Japan as a soft power, from the underground to tradition, in The New Japonisme, our manifesto on Japan's soft power
- Up: our reader on paintings and the discipline of looking
- Across: Pablo Picasso, his fellow Spaniard in Paris, and the Pop screenprints of Andy Warhol
- Down: art pieces and objects on the Japanese arts and antiques shelf
Looking for a particular piece? Tell us the work, the edition or the garment, and the Curation and Concierge Team will look for it in Japan on your behalf.
References
- The Persistence of Memory, 1931, Museum of Modern Art
- Salvador Dalí, Museum of Modern Art
- Salvador Dalí: Creator/Collaborator, Museum of Modern Art
- Salvador Dalí, Wikipedia
- 21 facts about Salvador Dalí, Sotheby's
- Morohashi Museum of Modern Art, Wikipedia
- Morohashi Museum of Modern Art, official site (closure notice)
- Dalí and Gala dual timeline, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí
Written by The Japonista Curation and Concierge Team, Tokyo, Japan. Last reviewed 14 November 2026.
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