The Golden Age features the graphics, drawings, aquarelles and book illustrations of Salvador Dalí, a master better known for his surrealist painting.

On his hundredth anniversary, several retrospectives were dedicated throughout the world to one of the most innovative figures of modern art. The Hungarian public will now be introduced to a lesser-known facet of his art, graphics, of which he was no less a virtuoso. The exhibition will also facilitate a more nuanced view of the entire oeuvre.

Neither the public at large nor Dali aficionados are really familiar with the activity in graphics and book illustration of "the genius of the century". The Richard H. Mayer collection in Bamberg is the most important Dali collection in Europe. This will be the first time this private collection can be seen in a public museum. While the painting of Salvador Dalí, a world of melting clocks, burning giraffes and long-legged elephants has earned universal recognition, other activities of the painter, like his drawings, graphics and book illustrations have been undeservedly neglected.

The illustration of subjects from world literature played a very important part in his art. They are in fact not so much classic illustrations as Dalí's "paranoiac-critical" reinterpretations of key texts. This reinterpretation often involved the reshaping of the very exterior of the book, often with unusual results.

Both in terms of modelling and decoration, Dalí's "book objects" (livre-objets) opened new directions for 20th-century graphic design. He decorated the books with precious and semiprecious stones, drew on the handmade parchment pages with diamond and ruby scribers. Works illustrated by him and presented in Műcsarnok include such gems of erotic or pornographic literature as Casanova's memoirs or the marquis de Sade's stories, as well as famous children's books like Alice in Wonderland.

Special exhibits include a portrait of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, who had great influence on Dalí, and a late, de luxe edition of Freud’s works from the 1970's, on which the master worked with extraordinary dedication.