BEARING WITNESS TO DALI

Having been in the presence of Salvador Dali, Christine Agrillet, daughter of Dali's former manager and publisher Pierre Agrillet and custodian of the esteemed The Agrillet Collection, shares her memories of him, stretching back to her childhood.

- WORDS SUFFIAN HAKIM PHOTOS BRUNO GALLERY

WHEN CHRISTINE AGRILLET was eight years old, she followed her father Pierre to the eclectic home of his friend and client, an eccentric artist named Salvador Dali.

It was a beautiful villa in Portlligat, a seaside village in the Costa Brava region of northeastern Spain. She remembers the house to be full of pecularities.

“He had a turtle in his house,” she tells me at a lounge within Capella Singapore in Sentosa Island. “And on the turtle’s back was an ashtray. Salvador would smoke as he spoke to my father and then walk to the turtle every time he needed to flick ash off his cigar. It was the strangest thing.”

Agrillet is in Singapore to speak about The Agrillet Collection, a deeply personal and uniquely curated assembly of works by Salvador Dalí, which Agrillet inherited at her father's passing. Her father, Pierre Agrillet, was a close friend of Dali's, and had sought to commission and publish a collection by the Spanish master that departed from his usual subject matter and medium.

Unlike collections focused on Dalí's most famous paintings, this selection provides an intimate glimpse into the lesser-known facets of his genius, particularly his extraordinary body of graphic works—including rare etchings and gouaches.

The etchings were created using a traditional intaglio process on copper plates. In intaglio printing, the forms to be printed are cut or etched into copper plates using acide, its corrosive action forming the shapes intended by the artist. Ink is then painted into the recessed lines, forming these shapes.