In what year was the painting first exhibited?

The Persistence of Memory was first exhibited in 1932.

Salvador Dalí painted the small oil-on-canvas work in 1931, but its first public exhibition came the following year at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. The painting was reportedly sold there for $250, helping introduce its melting watches to American audiences.

The date is often confused with 1931, the year shown in the painting’s title records and catalog listings. That date identifies when Dalí made the work, not when the public first saw it. The painting later entered the Museum of Modern Art’s collection in 1934.

Its first exhibition helped establish one of Surrealism’s most recognizable images: watches appearing soft, limp, and detached from ordinary ideas of measured time. Dalí’s precise technique contrasts sharply with the dreamlike subject matter.