A UNIQUE collection of limited-edition prints and sculptures by world-famous Surrealist Salvador Dalí is going on show at Bournemouth's Westover Gallery.

It includes iconic imagery including his famous melting watches. The exhibition opens on Saturday, January 19, and runs to the end of the month.

The Westover is one of only a handful of galleries with exclusive rights to show this rare collection.

Although Dalí died nearly 20 years ago, the massive appeal of this flamboyant maverick and figurehead of the Surrealist movement lives on.

For Surrealism and Dali were made for each other. His signature works from the 1920 and '30s, both painterly and bizarre, are fused into the public's imagination.

Though he went his own way after clashing with the Surrealist leadership over his apolitical stance, Dali, with his inimitable moustache, is seen to this day as visual shorthand for Surrealism.

Classic Dalian imagery like the melting watch - inspired, it is said, by a dream about runny Camembert on a hot summer's afternoon - symbolised a metaphysical image of time devouring itself and everything else in its path; while an ordinary piano was transformed with a surrealist flourish into an extraordinary dancing object with female legs.

His original paintings and sculptures sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds, way out of the reach of the general public. This collection includes six framed limited-edition pieces retailing at £1,299; with limited edition bronze sculptures ranging from £8,950 up to to £21,000 for the stunning Space Venus - a work that in typically Daliesque fashion pays homage to the female form.

Born in Figueres, Spain, Dalí's extraordinary talent and eccentric personality helped him to become the iconic figure that he is today. He sprang to prominence with his first one-man show in Barcelona in 1925 but became internationally famous after three of his paintings were shown in the Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928.

Moving to Paris, he joined the Surrealist group and met Gala Eluard, wife of the French poet Paul Eluard. Gala would soon become Dali's lover, muse and, in 1934, his wife. More importantly, she also became his business manager. The pair were inseparable and when Gala died in 1982 Dali's health began to decline.

Burned in a fire in 1984, he spent his final years hidden from public view. He died from heart failure and respiratory complications in January 1989. He was 84 years old.

l The limited-edition prints can be seen at 4 Westover Road, Bournemouth from 9am to 5.30pm, Monday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm on Sunday.