As an art student, Salvador Dalí flitted between a number of styles, trying to find his niche. Living in Madrid in the early 1920s, he spent Sunday mornings at the Prado museum, analyzing the Old Masters. He experimented with Cubism, but then came across Sigmund Freud’s writings. The idea of the erotic subconscious enthralled him. Dalí joined the Paris circle of Surrealists and learned to work himself into a “paranoiac-critical state”—a level of consciousness that lies between sleeping and waking. He entered his most industrious period, the years 1929 to 1937, and works like The Persistence of Memory flew off his paintbrush. This exhibition of 30 paintings, drawings, photos, and surrealist objects focuses on those pivotal years. —Elena Clavarino