Antique

The Chalice of Love

Mystery of Sleep. "Time is fluid. It's not fixed, rigid, like we like to think, and while we sleep, we lose our perception of time," says Dmitry Piterman, who amassed this collection of Dalí's work.



Woman Aflame

Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí spent much of the 1940s in the U.S., avoiding World War II and its aftermath. He was a well-known fixture on the art scene in Monterey, Calif. — and that's where the largest collection of Dalí's work on the West Coast is now open to the public.
A week before opening day, everything was still in bubble wrap. But Dmitry Piterman knew where each piece was. The Ukrainian-born real estate developer has collected more than 570 etchings, lithographs, sculptures and tapestries, and he can speak with intimate detail about all of it, while ripping open one bubble-wrapped lithograph after another.



"Some of the brushes he used had only one hair," Piterman says. "So imagine the meticulousness with which he painted and created his art. That's when jokester Dalí kind of disappeared. But burning giraffes and elephants on their frail little legs, all that is part of his work and part of kind of the provoking Dalí."

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