Cover A young Christine Argillet (pictured right) with Salvador Dalí (left) (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
A young Christine Argillet (pictured right) with Salvador Dalí (left) (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
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Christine Argillet offers an intimate portrait of Salvador Dalí beyond the myth, tracing five decades of collaboration between the surrealist master and her father Pierre Argillet through the remarkable Argillet Collection
More than a surrealist icon, Christine Argillet remembers Salvador Dalí as a man who delighted in surprise. “Everything was subject to surprise,” she recalls. “But he [always] surprised himself first.” He would appear in the morning with his signature moustache sculpted one way, only to reappear hours later transformed, having experimented with wax, tape or dye simply to see what would happen. For a child, it was both amusing and entirely natural.
“He was very playful—little things, nothing complex, just fun,” says Argillet, who spent much of her childhood in the presence of Dalí. He often teased her, played with her hair, and encouraged experimentation—such as trying on optical glasses that reversed vision. These domestic, spontaneous—and sometimes faintly absurd—moments shaped her earliest understanding of Dalí as an artist for whom invention was inseparable from daily life.
That same spirit carried into the collaboration spanning five decades between Dalí and her father, Pierre Argillet—the publisher and master printer who would become one of the artist’s closest confidants. The Argillet Collection, comprising close to 200 etchings alongside gouaches and tapestries, took shape during a period when figurative work had fallen out of favour in Europe, eclipsed by abstraction. Dalí was already famous, yet increasingly at odds with prevailing taste.
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Above Pierre Argillet proposed themes rooted in literature, poetry and myth. “Head with Drawers” (1967), from a series illustrating Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Secret Poems” (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
Pierre Argillet proposed themes rooted in literature, poetry and myth. “Head with Drawers” (1967), from a series illustrating Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Secret Poems” (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
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Pierre, deeply literate and committed to the disciplines of drawing and printmaking, offered something rare: time, conviction and an uncompromising belief in craft. “My father loved the drawing and etching process,” Argillet explains. “What he requested from Dalí was to etch in a traditional way, on copper plates. It was, in my father’s view, the way to promote at its best the talent of Dalí.” Their disagreements were frequent, even fierce, but always anchored in mutual respect. When Pierre rejected a plate, Dalí accepted it without resentment. “He would say, ‘Oh, I know it’s not for you. Don’t worry, I’ll give you something else’,” Argillet shares.
What emerged from that exchange was more than just a body of work, but a distinctive lens on Dalí himself. The Argillet Collection is often described as harmonious, a quality Argillet attributes to her father’s editorial eye. Pierre proposed themes rooted in literature, poetry and myth—Apollinaire, Faust, Greek mythology, just to name a few—then moved swiftly to create the conditions for work before Dalí’s attention leapt elsewhere. “You had to be very prompt,” Argillet says. “If he was not doing that, Dalí would jump to another project.” When the focus held, the results were astonishing, capturing instinct rather than deliberation.
Above Dalí (pictured left) with his publisher Pierre Argillet (right) (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
Dalí (pictured left) with his publisher Pierre Argillet (right) (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
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Etching, as a medium, demands precision. Lines bitten into copper cannot be erased, and the image must be conceived in reverse before it is pulled onto paper. This technical irreversibility is central to understanding the collection, where the work exposes the artist’s hand and mind with unusual clarity—each hesitation, flourish and risk preserved in metal. In contrast to paintings refined over months, these prints retain the immediacy of thought made visible.
Above “Medusa” (1963), from the Greek mythology series, in which Dalí used a dead octopus found on the beach, dipped it in acid and pressed it onto the copper plate (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
“Medusa” (1963), from the Greek mythology series, in which Dalí used a dead octopus found on the beach, dipped it in acid and pressed it onto the copper plate (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
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That immediacy also allowed Dalí’s humour and provocation to surface unfiltered. Argillet recalls the Medusa etching from the Greek mythology series as emblematic. One morning, Dalí found a dead octopus on the shore near his home in Spain. He dipped it in acid and pressed it onto a copper plate, using the animal’s imprint as the basis for the composition. From the tentacled form emerged Medusa’s profile, seductive and threatening, holding a skull. “He created something extraordinary out of something not intended for this purpose,” Argillet points out.
Above “Bust of Mao”, from Dalí’s 1967 series illustrating poems by Mao Zedong (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
“Bust of Mao”, from Dalí’s 1967 series illustrating poems by Mao Zedong (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
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The same creativity and playfulness extended to literature and politics. In the late 1960s, Dalí illustrated poems by Mao Zedong, embedding satire that slipped past official scrutiny: royal lilies in place of communist symbols; a bust without a head simply because, according to him, Mao was larger than life and would not fit on a single page. “There are different layers,” Argillet observes. “If somebody doesn’t get the symbolism, they’ll see it as a nice piece of art.” Dalí, she insists, was not didactic. He was whimsical, enjoying the freedom to be contradictory, to inhabit multiple positions at once.
Above Playful by nature, Dalí encouraged experimentation—here with optical glasses that reversed vision (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
Playful by nature, Dalí encouraged experimentation—here with optical glasses that reversed vision (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
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For Argillet, growing up within this orbit meant absorbing Dalí’s worldview long before she could articulate it. “He saw the world as one in which everything was linked,” she says. That philosophy—of connection rather than progression—became a family language, revisited across generations. When she later assumed responsibility for the collection, she understood it as custodianship. “Being truly the only direct archive to the 50-year-long collaborative efforts of Salvador Dalí and Pierre Argillet,” she has written, “carries both honour and humility.” The archive also includes photographs, films and memories of life with Dalí and his wife and muse, Gala.
Above Christine Argillet in Singapore in 2025 (Photo: Bruno Gallery)
Christine Argillet in Singapore in 2025 (Photo: Bruno Gallery)
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Safeguarding that archive requires resisting simplification. Dalí’s public persona—shaped by commercials, game shows and flamboyant self-promotion—often obscured the seriousness of his practice. Pierre worried about this, particularly when children recognised Dalí as a personality rather than an artist. Yet Argillet sees no contradiction. Andy Warhol, she notes, acknowledged Dalí as a precursor in understanding the power of visibility. The difference lies in proximity. To know Dalí privately was to encounter a man who worked relentlessly, rising before dawn, who read voraciously and returned again and again to classical texts in search of new entry points.
The Argillet Collection, shaped by that intimacy, occupies a distinct place outside institutional narratives. It has appeared in major museums and galleries across Europe and the US, yet remains tethered to a family history defined by friendship and trust. “That special relationship created this very unique collection,” Argillet says. “It has defined my work, my journey from childhood to maturity, and my family history.”
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Above “Blue Horses” (1966), from Dalí’s Individual Etchings series (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
“Blue Horses” (1966), from Dalí’s Individual Etchings series (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
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When the collection was presented in Singapore at Bruno Gallery from September to November last year, Argillet was in town to share these stories first-hand. She is careful to frame each exhibition of the collection as an invitation to look closely. “Each etching reveals something truly personal,” she says, pointing to humour, spontaneity and technical rigour coexisting on the same plate. For collectors and connoisseurs, the value lies precisely there: in works that resist polish, preserve the risk of their making, and offer access to Dalí not as myth, but as a living presence still capable of surprise.
Above “Magic Circle” (1968), from the Faust Vignettes (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
“Magic Circle” (1968), from the Faust Vignettes (Photo: The Argillet Collection)
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As Senior Editor of Tatler Singapore, Hashirin champions and refines the storytelling across platforms—curating and crafting compelling profiles, cover stories and features that spotlight visionaries shaping culture, business and impact. Driven by curiosity, she draws inspiration from the artists, changemakers and trailblazers she encounters through her work. Beyond the pages of Tatler, she is an avid supporter of local theatre and delights in seeking out art in every city she visits.
