SALVADOR DALI - BIOGRAPHY

BORN: May 11, 1904, Figueras, SpainDIED: Jan. 23, 1989, Figueras

Beginnings

As an art student in Madrid and Barcelona, Dalí assimilated a vast number of artistic styles anddisplayed unusual technical facility as a painter.

In the late 1920s, two events brought about the development of his mature artistic style:

• His discovery of Sigmund Freud's writings on the erotic significanceof subconscious imagery; and

• His affiliation with the Paris Surrealists, a group of artists and writers who sought toestablish the "greater reality" of man's subconscious over his reason.

Surrealism

To bring up images from his subconscious mind, Dalí began to induce hallucinatory states inhimself by a process he described as “paranoiac critical.” Once Dalí hit on this method, hispainting style matured with extraordinary rapidity, and from 1929 to 1937 he produced thepaintings that made him the world's best-known Surrealist artist.

He depicted a dream world in which commonplace objects are juxtaposed, deformed, orotherwise metamorphosed in a bizarre and irrational fashion.

Dalí portrayed these objects in meticulous, almost painfully realistic detail and usually placedthem within bleak, sunlit landscapes that were reminiscent of his Catalonian homeland.

Perhaps the most famous of these enigmatic images is "The Persistence of Memory" (1931), inwhich limp, melting watches rest in an eerily calm landscape.

With the Spanish director Luis Buñuel, Dalí also made two Surrealistic films:

• Un Chien andalou (1928; An Andalusian Dog); and• L'Âge d'or (1930; The Golden Age).

SALVADOR DALI - BIOGRAPHY

Both films are similarly filled with grotesque but highly suggestive images.

Renaissance

In the late 1930s, Dalí switched to painting in a more academic style under the influence of theRenaissance painter Raphael, and as a consequence he was expelled from the Surrealistmovement.

Thereafter, he spent much of his time designing theatre sets, interiors of fashionable shops, andjewelry, as well as exhibiting his genius for flamboyant self-promotional stunts in the UnitedStates, where he lived from 1940 to 1955.

In the period from 1950 to 1970, Dalí painted many works with religious themes, though he

SALVADOR DALI - BIOGRAPHY

continued to explore erotic subjects, to represent childhood memories, and to use themescentering on his wife, Gala.

Notwithstanding their technical accomplishments, these later paintings are not as highly regardedas the artist's earlier works.

The most interesting and revealing of Dalí's books is The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (1942-44).

Landscape Near Figueras - 1910

Dutch Interior - 1914

Fiesta in Figueres - 1916

Landscape near Ampurdan - 1914

Crepuscular Old Man - 1918

Duck- 1918

Portrait of Lucia - 1918

Portrait of a Gypsy - 1919

Self Portrait in the Studio - 1919

Saltimbanques - 1921

Self Portrait with the neck of Raphael - 1921

Voyeur - 1921

Bathers of Llaner - 1923

Crystalline – Still Life - 1923

Cubist Self Portrait - 1923

Figure at the Window - 1925

Barcelonese Mannequin - 1927

Inagural Gooseflesh - 1928

Putrefied Donkey - 1928

Vertigo - 1930

The Persistence of Memory - 1931

The Enigma of William Tell - 1933

Cardinal - 1934

Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet’s’ Angelus - 1935

Paranoiac Visage - 1935

The Horseman of Death - 1935

The Dream Places a Hand on Man’s Shoulder - 1936

The Anthropomorphic Cabinet - 1936

Swans Reflecting Elephants - 1937

Sleep - 1937

The Invention of the monsters - 1937

Head of a Woman in the Form of a Battle - 1936

Spain - 1938

The Enigma of Hitler - 1939

The Invisible Bust of Voltaire - 1941

One Second Before Awakening from a Dream Caused by theFlight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate, 1944

Resurrection of the Flesh - 1945

The Eye - 1945

Galatea of The Spheres - 1952

Madonna in Particles - 1952

The Disintegration of Persistence of Memory, 1954

Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion, 1954

Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by Her Own Chastity, 1954

The Last Supper - 1955

Sorcery The Seven Arts - 1957

Dionysus Spitting the Complete Image of Cadaqués on the Tipof the Tongue of a Three-Storied Gaudinian Woman, 1958

Metamorphosis of Hitler's Face into a Moonlit Landscape with Accompaniment, 1958

Birth of A Divinity - 1960

Hyperxiological Sky - 1960

Mohammed’s dream - 1961

The Alchemist - 1962

Fifty Abstract Paintings Which as Seen from Two Yards Change into Three LeninsMasquerading as Chinese and as Seen from Six Yards Appear as the Head of a Royal Bengal

Tiger, 1963

Toreo Noir - 1969

Polyhedron. Basketball Players Being Transformedinto Angels (Assembling a Hologram - the Central Element), 1972

Wounded Soft Watch - 1974

Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which atTwenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham

Lincoln - Homage to Rothko, 1976

The Garden of Hours - 1981

The Road of The Enigma - 1981

Atmospherocephalic Figures, 1982

Exploded Head - 1982

Landscape with Hidden Image of Michelangelo's "David", 1982

Three Glorious Enigmas of Gala - 1982