The Dance is a painting by the famous Spanish artist Salvador Dali. The surreal depiction of two people against the backdrop of the desert excites the imagination. One gets the impression that the dance brings them not joy, but pain. The work does not belong to the most famous works of the master, but its history is very impressive.

Author: Salvador Dali (1904-1989).
Year of writing: 1957.
Style: Surrealism.
Genre: Landscape, portrait.
Location: Morohashi Museum of Contemporary Art, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.

Salvador Dali is a Spanish artist of the 20th century who went down in art history as one of the brightest representatives of surrealism. He was a talented painter, a very extraordinary and shocking personality.

Once Salvador Dali was invited to create a series of works to decorate the theater. One of the paintings was called “The Art of Boogie Woogie”. It showed several figures frozen in the middle of the corridor. An atmosphere of suffering rather than joy reigned. This was the first version of “Dance”.

Painting Dance by Salvador Dali – a surreal depiction of dancing people with a fascinating history

Unfortunately, a few years later the piece was destroyed by fire. Then the artist painted a new picture, reducing the number of characters and changing the background. “Dance” got a second life and acquired another name – “Rock and Roll”.

In 1988, Maria Victoria Enao, the wife of the famous drug lord Pablo Escobar, became the owner of the work. The woman said that collecting paintings helped her cope with the atmosphere of violence around her family. One day a car exploded near their house. Nobody was hurt, “Dance” also survived.

After the accident, Maria took the piece to her sister’s house. But even here the work was not safe: the mansion was set on fire by members of the Los Pepes group, who were at enmity with the drug lord. Only after the death of Pablo Escobar did it become clear that the arsonists had previously taken away the painting. They offered Maria to return the job, but the woman decided not to mess with them.

Perhaps this is what saved the life of her and the children. The Los Pepes people decided that she was not a threat to them, and did not touch her family. This story is one example of how a painting became famous not because of the plot, but because of what happened to the work in the future. Perhaps the most dangerous adventures are over: since 2018, The Dance has been in the Morohashi Museum of Modern Art in Japan.