When in Singapore: Hello Dali! Enter the mind of a genius at the Art Science Museum

Born as Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol in Figueres, Catalonia, he is a descendant of the Moors and son of a notary public. Beyond his roots, the genius in him is an artist, a skilled draftsman and a designer. a sculptor and a surrealist. Like any madman, he is passionate, excessive and loud, a rebel and an eccentric.

Dali didn’t hold back in exploring and utilizing art’s diverse media—oil, watercolor, drawing, graphics, sculpture, film, photography, performing arts, and jewelry. This man was busy absorbing knowledge in his lifetime of creativity. Did this thirst mold him into the madman and the genius that he is? What it did was turn him into one of the 20th century’s most illustrious artists, creating highly recognizable images of the surrealist movement, like his best-known piece, the 1931-completed "The Persistence of Memory."

Salvador Dali as an artist was constantly growing and evolving. The body of his work reveals it, from early impressionist paintings through his transitional surrealist works to his classical period.

Imaginative, striking, and bizarre, Dali's surreal art was comparable to his behavior. His eccentricity, like sporting his iconic moustache influenced by 17th-century Spanish master painter Diego Velazquez, and public conduct drew more attention than his art, to the dismay of his supporters and to the irritation of his critics.

I have seen some of Dali's masterpieces in the best museums across the globe in the past. As luck would have it, I was in Singapore when the city opened a portal to the mind of this mad genius through the ArtScience Museum. Occupying ten galleries of the Marina Bay's iconic museum, "Dali: Mind of a Genius" exhibited over 250 of the artist’s works across three themed areas: Femininity and Sensuality, Religion and Mythology, and Dreams and Fantasy.

Sculptures, furniture, collages, gold objects, photographs and sketches—it was a worthwhile immersion in art by one of the greatest artists of our time. My hat's off to Singapore's newest art house, the ArtScience Museum, for bringing European art closer to home.

Are you in Singapore? If you are, it’s your turn to say, “Hello Dali!”