ATLANTA, GA.- A new exhibition opening exclusively in Atlanta explores artist Salvador Dali’s late work, including several major pieces that haven’t been seen in the U.S. in half a century. Dali is best known as a surrealist, his melting watches an iconic image of that movement. But after about 10 years, his relationship with that group grew strained in the late 1930s for a variety reasons both artistic and political. “Salvador Dali: The Late Work,” opening at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta on Saturday, focuses on the period from 1940 to 1983. “It’s become a really interesting area for investigation because you have Dali’s career which spans almost all of the 20th century, but historically people have really only looked at the 1930s,” said exhibition curator Elliott King. “It was almost like he died in 1940.” Dali declared himself a classic painter in 1941, and while many critics disparaged his later work as kitsch or too commer