A collection of Salvador Dalí paintings is making its U.S. debut — and Northeast Ohio residents will get to see it first.
“Dalí Beyond Time: Fashioning the Future” includes six original paintings by the surrealist master. It opens Thursday at Peg’s Gallery in Hudson. The exhibit is a collaboration between the gallery, Kent State’s School of Fashion Design & Merchandising and the Belgian textile company Scabal.
In terms of name recognition, the Dalí exhibit is by far the most notable for Peg’s Gallery, which opened its current space last October.
“Ultimately, I was kind of skeptical,” said Rick Kellar, president and CEO of Peg’s Foundation, which oversees the gallery. “I’m like, ‘Dalí paintings, man, I don’t know that those are in our little gallery in Hudson, Ohio.’ Well, sure enough, they are.”
In 1971, Scabal founder Otto Hertz went to Dalí with a proposal: Imagine what men’s fashion would look like in the year 2000. The result was 12 surreal and fanciful watercolor paintings. For decades, the paintings stayed in Scabal’s vault.
The story of how the paintings ended up in a little gallery in Hudson began with a business card, said Paolo Torello-Viera, president of tailoring of the Americas for Scabal.
While visiting Marc Nelson Denim in Tennessee, Torello-Viera met Cecelia Kirk, a Kent State fashion student who was interning at the menswear store. After driving Torello-Viera to the airport, Kirk asked him for his business card. The two kept in touch, and Kirk interned with Scabal in June 2024. After graduating in December, she joined the company full time.
Through Kirk, Torello-Viera connected with others at Kent State. He wanted to find a way to collaborate with the fashion school. At the same time, he was talking to his colleagues at Scabal about the Dalí paintings. They were restored in 2024, and Torello-Viera wanted to put them on view in the U.S.
“So my thought process was, if we bring just the paintings and we do an exhibit, it’s going to be something ordinary,” Torello-Viera said. “What can we do to be extraordinary?”
He continued, “Why don’t we engage the students of Kent on how they get inspired by the painting of Dalí?”
Kent State fashion students seek inspiration from Dalí
While the Dalí pieces — which includes six Scabal originals and six reproductions, plus gold jewelry designed by the artist — are the main draw of “Dalí Beyond Time,” the exhibit also includes looks created by Kent State fashion students.
For the spring 2025 semester, students in a design class were given the same prompt Dalí was given 50 years ago: to imagine the clothes of the future. Of the 38 student designs submitted, 12 were selected for the exhibit.
Their creations are just as eyecatching as the Dalí paintings that inspired them. A blue bodice by Olivia Shope gives the illusion of free-flowing water with its organic shape. But the fabric, a cotton sateen coated in resin, is hard to the touch.
Maya Settimi took inspiration from Dalí’s use of color and the butterflies depicted in the Scabal paintings. The pleats on Settimi’s billowing pants reveal oversized butterflies when parted. On top, a pair of large, distorted hands done in pale blue fabric wrap around the shoulders of the mannequin.
“These are art pieces that are really wild and extraordinary and unique, and the students had a wonderful time working with this prompt and taking their designs to the next level,” said Courtney Cable, lead of arts and communications at Peg’s Foundation.
Torello-Viera, along with Cable and Kellar, reviewed the students’ designs and selected the 12 for the exhibit. He called them “masterpieces.”
“So, these kids — I call them kids because to me they’re kids — they are from another league. They’re totally different,” Torello-Viera said. “I really enjoy and admire working with them because of the angle that they take that is always different from mine.”
Kellar isn’t sure what to expect attendance- wise for the exhibit. He joked about needing an oxygen tank when asked about a potential groundswell of visitors.
“To have a brand new gallery that’s barely even 10 months old be trusted by an owner to share [these pieces], for the first time ever in the Americas, is remarkable and amazing and we’re super grateful,” he said.
“Dalí Beyond Time” represents a new chapter for Kellar and his team. It’s one the little gallery in Hudson is excited to take on.
Dalí Beyond Time: Fashioning the Future
June 12 to Sept. 27 (Salvador Dalí original paintings will be on view June 12 to July 5)
Peg’s Gallery (53 First St., Hudson)
Hours: Monday to Wednesday: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Thursday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Free admission
pegsgallery.org
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