SALVADOR DALI

The man. The master. The marvel.

Afrin.Aliya.Gayatri.Nivedhya.Amal Rapheal
Birth date
May 11, 1904
Death date
January 23, 1989

Nationality Spanish

Education San Fernando School of Fine Arts, Madrid, Spain

Known for Painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, writing,

film, jewelry

Notable  The Persistence of Memory(1931)

work  Soft Construction with Boiled Beans
(Premonition of Civil War) (1936)
 Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a
Pomegranate a Second Before
Awakening(1944)
 Galatea of the Spheres (1952)
 Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954)

Movement Cubism, Dada, Surrealism

"The fact that I myself, at the moment of painting, do not understand my own pictures,
does not mean that these pictures have no meaning; on the contrary, their meaning is so
profound, complex, coherent, and involuntary that it escapes the most simple analysis of
logical intuition."
Salvador Dali is one of the most celebrated artists of
all time. His fiercely technical yet highly unusual
paintings, sculptures and visionary explorations in
film and life-size interactive art ushered in a new
generation of imaginative expression. From his
personal life to his professional endeavors, he always
took great risks and proved how rich the world can
be when you dare to embrace pure, boundless
creativity.
KEY IDEAS
• Freudian theory underpins Dalí's attempts at forging a visual language capable of rendering his
dreams and hallucinations. These account for some of the iconic and now ubiquitous images
through which Dalí achieved tremendous fame during his lifetime and beyond.

• Obsessive themes of eroticism, death, and decay permeate Dalí's work, reflecting his familiarity
with and synthesis of the psychoanalytical theories of his time. Drawing on blatantly
autobiographical material and childhood memories, Dalí's work is rife with often ready-
interpreted symbolism, ranging from fetishes and animal imagery to religious symbols.

• Dalí subscribed to Surrealist André Breton's theory of automatism, but ultimately opted for his
own self-created system of tapping the unconscious termed "paranoiac critical," a state in
which one could simulate delusion while maintaining one's sanity. Paradoxically defined by
Dalí himself as a form of "irrational knowledge," this method was applied by his contemporaries,
mostly Surrealists, to varied media, ranging from cinema to poetry to fashion.
 STYLE
Dali wanted to revolutionize the art of the twentieth century. All of his initial efforts to improve
techniques that were already mastered did not gain him any significant fame. He tried to improve
many different styles of art, such as Impressionism, Pointillism, Futurism, Cubism, and Neo-
Cubism (Secrest 15). Nevertheless, he sought to fulfill the needs of his mental and social life through a
new form of art. This new style of art was Surrealism that allowed Dali to express all of his “erotic
desires” and at the same time change the way the world viewed art.

• Exploration of Colour Pallet

• Use of Optical Illusion
• Keeping personal trace in most of his paintings
• Exaggerated anatomy especially seen in his popular paintings of long legged
elephants employed extensive symbolism in his paintings
• Dali employed extensive symbolism in his paintings
Sleep (1937) Said to depict a Les elephants (1948) The temptation of St.antony(1946)
monster held up by the crutches of
reality
 Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual
artworks and writings. Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created
strange creatures from everyday objects, and developed painting techniques that allowed
the unconscious to express itself.
The aim was to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality." Artists painted
unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created strange creatures from everyday
objects and developed painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself and/or an
idea/concept.
It is expression of the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason
.
Salvador dalí is among the most versatile and prolific artists of the 20th century and the most
famous surrealist. Though chiefly remembered for his painterly output, in the course of his long
career he successfully turned to sculpture, printmaking, fashion, advertising, writing, and, perhaps
most famously, filmmaking in his collaborations with Luis Buñuel and Alfred Hitchcock. Dalí was
renowned for his flamboyant personality and role of mischievous provocateur as much as for his
undeniable technical virtuosity. In his early use of organic morphology, his work bears the stamp of
fellow Spaniards Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. His paintings also evince a fascination
for classical and renaissance art, clearly visible through his hyper-realistic style and religious
symbolism of his later work. He was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and
grandiose behaviour. To the dismay of those who held his work in high regard, and to the irritation
of his critics, his eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more
attention than his artwork.
 WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT HIM TODAY?
Decades after his death, the brand name of Salvador Dalí has
not declined. His curved mustache—recently voted to be the
most famous example of facial hair of all time—has become a
household symbol for artistic invention, and can be found on
coffee mugs and in costume stores worldwide. While his
celebrity persists, it’s perhaps more surprising that Dalí’s
paintings continue to shock audiences half a century after
their creation. While many of his avant-garde contemporaries
have lost their taboo factor, Dalí’s works are still disturbing to
the modern eye, as viewers seek to uncode their grotesque,
Invisible Lion, Horse, Sleeping Woman., 1930
dreamlike contents. “The only difference between me and a
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges
madman,” Dalí famously once quipped, “is that I am not Pompidou, Paris

mad.”
WORKS
 UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1927)

Un Chien Andalou recreates an ethereal setting in which images are

presented in montaged clips in order to jostle reality and tap the
sunconscious, shocking the viewer awake.
• a glaring cow's eye in a woman's eye socket soliciting feelings of
discomfort. In the scene that follows, a razor blade slashes eye in
extreme close-up.
• The film turned out to be a sensation and gained Dalí entrance to
the most creative group of Parisian artists at the time, The
Surrealists.
• In fact, its known as the first Surrealist film yet remains paramount
in the canon of experimental film to this day.
 GREAT MASTURBATOR (1929)
Central to the piece is a large distorted human face looking down upon a
landscape, a familiar rocky shoreline scene reminiscent of Dalí's home in
Catalonia. A nude female figure representing Dalí's new-at-the-time muse
Gala rises from the head, symbolic of the type of fantasy a man would
conjure while engaged in the practice suggested by the title. Her mouth near
a male's crotch suggests impending fellatio while he seems to be literally "cut"
at the knees from which he bleeds, a sign of a stifled sexuality. Other motifs in
the painting include a grasshopper - a consistent beacon for sexual anxiety in
Dalí's work, ants - elusion to decay and death, and an egg - representing
fertility.
The painting may represent Dalí's severely conflicted attitudes towards sexual intercourse and his lifelong phobia of
female genitalia right at the cross section of meeting and falling in love with Gala. When he was a young boy, Dalí's
father exposed him to a book of explicit photos demonstrating the horrific effects of venereal disease, perpetuating
traumatic associations of sex with morbidity and rot in his mind. It is said that Dalí was a virgin when he met Gala and
that he later encouraged his wife to have affairs to satisfy her sexual desires. Later in life when his paintings turned to
religious and philosophical themes, Dalí would tout chastity as a door to spirituality.
 THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY (1931)
This iconic and much-reproduced painting depicts the
fluidity of time as a series of melting watches, their forms
described by Dalí as inspired by a surrealist perception of
that cheese melting in the sun. The distinction between
hard and soft objects highlights Dalí's desire to flip reality
lending to his subjects characteristics opposite their usually
inherent properties, an un-reality often found in our
dreamscapes. They are surrounded by a swarm of ants
hungry for the organic processes of putrefaction and
• It challenges the idea that time is
decay of which Dalí held unshakable fascination. Because
rigid
the melting flesh at the painting's center resembles Dalí, we
• It is also said to be an interpretation
might see this piece as a reflection on the artist's
of Einstein’s theory of relativity–the
immortality amongst the rocky cliffs of his Catalonian
warping of space & time by gravity.
home.
 GEOPOLITICUS CHILD WATCHING THE
BIRTH OF THE NEW MAN (1943)

 The painting shows the man emerging from the egg to be

"new" nation United States, in the process of becoming a
new world power.
 Represents the growing importance of the Third World,
 while Europe is being crushed by the man's hand,
indicating its diminishing importance as an international
power.
 Blood shows war.