John Lennon Meets Salvador Dalí in Paris – 24 March 1969

March 24, 2026

John Lennon Meets Salvador Dalí in Paris – 24 March 1969

Monday 24 March 1969 | John Lennon

On 24 March 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono met the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí in Paris, during the same trip that would lead to their famous Amsterdam Bed-In the following day.

The Meeting

The encounter took place at the Hotel Meurice on the Rue de Rivoli — Dalí’s preferred Parisian residence. The meeting brought together two of the most provocative creative figures of the 20th century: Lennon, at the height of his cultural influence as a Beatle and peace activist, and Dalí, the grand surrealist master whose work had defined avant-garde art for decades.

Dalí presented Lennon with a gift: a sculpture of a brain made from a telephone receiver, a characteristically surrealist gesture that blended art, communication, and the absurd.

Cultural Significance

The meeting reflected the extraordinary cultural moment of early 1969, when rock music, avant-garde art, and political activism were converging in ways that had no precedent. Lennon and Ono’s presence in Paris — en route to Amsterdam for the Bed-In — placed them at the centre of this intersection.

Dalí’s admiration for The Beatles was well documented; he had previously described them as “a biological necessity.”