See — or even own — works of Salvador Dalí

PALM BEACH GARDENS — The humor and eccentricity of Salvador Dalí, one of the world’s best-known artists, colors the childhood memories of Christine Argillet.

There was the time he found a beautiful dead octopus in front of his house in Spain, immersed it in acid and placed it on a copper plate as the basis of his etching of the Greek monster Medusa. On another occasion, at a restaurant in Spain in the absence of a pen, he used Argillet’s mother’s dark red lipstick to create a magnificent drawing of a woman. He loved doing the unexpected. “He was a lot of fun. He was always doing jokes. He was very playful,” Argillet recalled. “Very charming, very elegant. He was doing jokes you wouldn’t notice immediately. That was his biggest pleasure.”

Now Argillet, the daughter of Dalí publisher and friend Pierre Argillet, has the pleasure of showing a collec tion of the arti st’s copper etchings; unique drawings; water colors; and extremely rare, hand-woven Aubusson tapestries at Onessimo Fine Art in Palm Beach Gardens.

She will host three opening receptions at the gallery in PGA Commons, 4530 PGA Blvd., Suite 101, today, Saturday and Sunday evenings. The exhibition she curated is open to the public, but RSVPs are required. The works on display through Jan. 31 are for sale.

Argillet’s father worked with Dalí for 30 years, beginning when Dalí was in his 20s after meeting in Paris between World War I and World War II, she said. They had similar tastes and long discussions about what Dalí would illustrate.

Together, Dalí and Argillet produced almost 200 etchings with subject matter that included Greek mythology, Dalí’s re-interpretation of Pablo Picasso’s bullfighting series, the poems of French playwright Guillaume Apollinaire and hippies.

The e t c hi ngs f ro m t he L e s Hippies series are some of the most sought-after Dalí has done, said Onessimo Fine Art President Debra Onessimo. Argillet returned from India in 1969 with photographs that Dalí used as the groundwork for the series, according to a book detailing the exhibit.

Argillet said she’s fascinated with the etchings from the Surrealistic bullfight series. Dalí found bullfighting, which was very popular in Spain in the 1960s, “very bloody” as a game, so he depicted the audience as barbaric, she said.

“You have in it the beauty and strength of Picasso’s bullfights, the creative and humorous touch of Dalí,” she said of one image with a giraffe in a carnival-type atmosphere with death behind it.

The two stopped collaborating on etchings when Dalí said the very shiny copper plates hurt his eyes. Dalí offered to do lithographs instead, but Pierre Argillet wanted to protect the integrity of the collection, Argillet said.

The Argi l l e t c ol l e c t i on has been on display at some of the most renowned museums in the world, including the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Russia.