'The best cinema is the kind that can be perceived with your eyes closed.' Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí (1904-89) is one of the most famous and notorious artists of the twentieth century. This unprecedented exhibition brings together more than one hundred works by Dalí, including major paintings, photographs, drawings and films, in order to explore the central role of cinema in his work as both inspiration and an outlet for experimentation.

Overflowing with imagination, the exhibition displays collaborations between Dalí and legendary film makers, such as Luis Buñuel, Walt Disney, Alfred Hitchcock and the Marx brothers, presenting some of the most stunning images from twentieth century cinema. It includes his early collaborative projects with Buñuel in L'Age d'or and Un Chien andalou - featuring the infamous image of an eye being cut by a razor. Dalí explored his obsessions in all modes of practice, so that the relationship between his paintings and his films provides a fascinating insight into his imagination.

As well as showing how Dalí fashioned film imagery from his paintings, Dalí & Film also exposes how he responded to cinema. Film was a major passion throughout his career and Dalí was one of the first artists for whom film was a key influence as well as a creative outlet. In his younger years he loved the bizarre slapstick humour of Hollywood comedians, such as Harry Langdon, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. He saw this mass entertainment as an antidote for the pretensions of high culture and this cinematic vision became a model for his own work. Dalí & Film presents this great artist in a light you have never seen before.

Exhibition organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with the Gala-Salvador Dalí Fundació, with support from the Spanish Tourist Office. Media Partner: The Times