In the 1960s, Beniamino Levi was introduced to Salvador Dalí at the prestigious Hotel Maurice in Paris; it was to prove to be an important meeting. As a result of their acquaintance, Levi travelled frequently to meet with Dalí at his residences in Paris and New York and at his home in Spain. Fascinated by some of Dalí’s early sculptural works, which he had discovered and purchased in a Paris gallery, Levi encouraged the Surrealist master to express his artistic vision again in sculptural form, commissioning him to create a series of bronzes based on his most famous Surrealist images.
Levi worked closely with Dalí in the development of the bronze sculpture collection and is recognized worldwide as a leading expert on the bronzes of Dalí. He has lectured and written on the subject on numerous occasions, also publishing a definitive text on the Dalí Sculpture Collection, ‘Dalí in the Third Dimension ‘, with the Italian publishing house Allemandi.
It was through these early encounters with Dalí during the 1960s that Levi became the publisher of the Limited Edition Dalí Sculptures and began to establish The Dalí Universe Collection, which today, more than 50 years later, has become the immense and important artwork collection managed by the Dalí Universe. The Dalí Universe artwork collection has continuously evolved over the past 40 years.
