| (1904–89). Despite all that was written by and about him, Spanish surrealist artist Salvador
Dalí remained a mystery as a man and as an artist. A curious blend of
reality and fantasy characterized both his life and his works.
In the Catalonian town of Figueras, near Barcelona, Salvador
Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domenech was born on May 11, 1904. His family
encouraged his early interest in art; a room in the family home was the
young artist's first studio. In 1921 Dalí enrolled at the San Fernando
Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. There he joined an avant-garde
circle of students that included filmmaker Luis Buñuel and poet-dramatist Federico García Lorca. Although Dalí did very well in his studies, he was expelled from school because of his eccentric dress and behavior.
It was at this time that Dalí came under the influence of two forces that shaped his philosophy and his art. The first was Sigmund Freud's
theory of the unconscious. The second was his association with the
French surrealists, a group of artists and writers led by the French
poet André Breton. In 1928, with the help of the Spanish painter Joan Miró,
Dalí visited Paris for the first time and was introduced to the leading
surrealists. The next year he settled there, becoming in a short time
one of the best-known members of the group. During the 1930s his
paintings were included in surrealist shows in most major European
cities and in the United States.
Under the influence of the surrealist movement,
Dalí's style crystallized into the disturbing blend of precise realism
and dreamlike fantasy that became his hallmark. Against desolate
landscapes he painted unrelated and often bizarre objects. These
pictures, described by Dalí as “hand-painted dream photographs,” were
inspired by dreams, hallucinations, and other unconscious forces that
the artist was unable to explain; they were produced by a creative
method he called “paranoiac-critical activity.” Dalí's most
characteristic works also showed the influence of the Italian
Renaissance masters, the mannerists, and the Italian metaphysical
painters Carlo Carrà and Giorgio de Chirico.
During World War II Dalí and his wife, Gala, took
refuge in the United States, but after the war they returned to Spain.
His international reputation continued to grow, based as much on his
showy lifestyle and flair for publicity as on his prodigious output of
paintings, graphic works, book illustrations, and designs for jewelry,
textiles, clothing, costumes, and stage sets. Dalí died in Figueras on
Jan. 23, 1989.
Dalí produced two films—An Andalusian Dog, released in 1928, and The Golden Age
(1930)—with Buñuel. Considered surrealist classics, they are filled
with grotesque images. His writings include poetry, fiction, and a
controversial autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (1942). The Persistence of Memory, painted in 1931, is perhaps the world's most widely recognized surrealist painting |
