SALVADOR DALI.

Salvador Dali, a Spanish artist from Madrid, (born on May 11th 1904, died on January 23, 1989) is probably the most famous surrealist artist. His strange persona started when he was 10 years of age, an age where he also began his first drawing lessons. He showed talent in painting and drawing while he was still very young, and at the age of 18, began his studies in a Fine Art school in Madrid and became very well known among the students there for his abnormal behavior and strange manners, but even more so for his artwork. In 1926 he was then expelled from school for claiming that none of the professors where qualified enough to examine him. Throughout his life, Dali kept and showed his love for Catalan culture, and he showed the landscape surrounding figures in several popular paintings through his career. His work was influenced by Raphael and Velazquez among some others. Dali was also greatly influenced by Picasso especially when they met in 1926, and was also influenced by cubism. Dali joined the surrealists in 1929, and with Magritte, he developed the visual surrealist style. One of Dali's most famous paintings, The Persistence of Memory (1931) displays a landscape with melting watches. The idea for this well known artwork came from an evening after Dali had entertained guests and saw soft, half melted cheese on the table which gave him the idea of melting watches. Dali often liquefied shapes, he made use of elephants and other animals in his artworks, and the image of an egg also played an important role in some of his paintings. He was one of the artists who was greatly influenced by Freud, and dream analysis became a focal point in Dali's paintings. The Freudian theory shows us Dali's attempts at creating meaning out of his dreams and hallucinations. These account for some of Dali's iconic artworks by which he gained tremendous fame throughout his life and beyond. Dali's works showed themes of eroticism, death and decay that reflect his own familiarity with the known theories of his time. Though Dali is mainly remembered for his paintings, in the course of his long career he successfully turned to print making, sculpture  fashion, writing, advertising and was also very famously known for film-making in his collaborations with Luis Bunuel and Alfred Hitchcock. His paintings also show a fascination for Classical and Renaissance art which is very visible through his hyper-realistic style and religious symbolism of his later work. Dali's manner of showing and combining the gap between reality and illusion influenced all manner of modern artists. Beyond creating and developing his own symbolic language, Dali experimented on a way to represent the inner mind. He is known to be one of the major surrealists who used shock and unease to show moments of pleasure, and his work remains highly contemporary. He got formally excluded from the surrealist group in 1834 for his political views.

"There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is same. I know I am mad."

-Dali.

Salvador Dali.


Salvador Dali, Swans reflecting Elephants, 1937.


Salvador Dali, Ascension, 1958.


Salvador Dali, Illuminated Pleasures, 1929.


Salvador Dali, Assumpta Corpusclaria Lapislazulina, 1952.


"Hair, I command you to rise up."


Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali.


Gala, Dali's wife, with Dali's design for a shoe as a hat for Elsa Schiaparelli in 1937.

References:

Surrealism Movement, Artists and Major Works | The Art Story. 2013.Surrealism Movement, Artists and Major Works | The Art Story. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm. [Accessed 15 May 2013].

Famous Paintings by Salvador Dalí. 2013. Famous Paintings by Salvador Dalí. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.show-your-own-art-gallery.com/paintings-by-salvador-dali.html. [Accessed 15 May 2013].

Salvador Dalí. Short and informative about his life and work.. 2013. Salvador Dalí. Short and informative about his life and work.. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.show-your-own-art-gallery.com/salvador-dali.html. [Accessed 15 May 2013].

Freud - The Life, Work and Theories of Sigmund Freud. 2013. Freud - The Life, Work and Theories of Sigmund Freud. [ONLINE] Available at:http://psychology.about.com/od/sigmundfreud/p/sigmund_freud.htm. [Accessed 15 May 2013].

Salvador Dalí Biography - Facts, Birthday, Life Story - Biography.com . 2013.Salvador Dalí Biography - Facts, Birthday, Life Story - Biography.com . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/salvador-dal%C3%AD-40389. [Accessed 15 May 2013].