Salvador Dalí (Spain 1904 - Spain 1989)
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí was an important Catalan painter, known for his surrealist work. His painting stands out for its unique combination of bizarre, dreamlike images with an academic, traditional technique similar to that of the Renaissance masters. Beyond his painting, few people know of his enormous versatility, as some of his most popular works are sculptures and other objects. Dalí also made interesting contributions to theater, fashion, photography, cinema (having worked with the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock), television commercials and even design, creating logos for products.
From childhood, Dalí showed an interest in the visual arts. He began his artistic education at the Municipal School of Drawing. In 1916, during a summer vacation in Cadaqués, he discovered Impressionist painting. His first works, such as "Girl at the Window", in a naturalistic and meticulous vein, already conveyed an ambiguous sense of unreality that would later become more pronounced. In 1921, he entered the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid, but was expelled from the institution in 1926 after declaring that no one there was competent enough to evaluate him.
In his paintings he experimented with Cubism and Dadaism. He became friends with the poet Federico García Lorca and the filmmaker Luis Buñuel.
Salvador Dalí
In 1928, persuaded by the Catalan painter Joan Miró, he moved to Paris and joined the Surrealist movement. It was around this time that he met Gala (Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, a Russian émigré), then the wife of the poet Paul Éluard, who would become his companion and model for the rest of his life. He then collaborated with Luis Buñuel on two celebrated films, Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1929) and L'Âge d'or (The Golden Age, 1930).
From then on, the Catalan master produced his finest works: with some experience behind him and eager for recognition, he painted his best-known pieces, especially "The Persistence of Memory", with its iconic image of melting clocks. In 1939 he was expelled from the Surrealist group, since almost all of its members followed a Marxist political orientation, while Dalí declared himself an anarcho-monarchist. Indeed, while many artists were "forgotten" under the Franco regime, Dalí enjoyed prestige thanks to his admiration for the monarchy and for Franco.
A peculiarity of his work was his admiration for certain paintings, which he "quoted" countless times in his own work. Among them are "The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci, "Las Meninas" by Velázquez, "The Angelus" by Millet, "The Battle of Tetuan" by Meissonier and "The Lacemaker" by Vermeer of Delft (his favorite painter). They appear in Dalí's paintings in many forms and conditions: as shadows, dismembered, analyzed in different dimensions, in reliefs, and so on.
Dalí died of pneumonia and heart failure in the town where he was born and was buried in the main atrium of his Theatre-Museum. His last works date from 1983.
Quotes by Salvador Dalí
“Drawing is the honesty of art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.”
“God invented men, and men invented the metric system.”
“Have no fear of perfection – you'll never reach it.”
“I don't take drugs: I am drugs.”
“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.”
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad!”
“The only thing the world will never have enough of is exaggeration.”
“For some days now I have been thinking that I am going to die of an overdose of satisfaction.”
“Those who do not want to imitate anything produce nothing.”
“Modern art is when you decide to buy a painting to cover a part of the wall whose paint is peeling and, after examining some 50 works, you conclude that it is really best to leave it as it is.”
“I live in a permanent state of intellectual erection.”
“Do not be afraid of perfection. You will never reach it.”
“The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.”
“How can I expect my friends to understand the crazy things that go through my head, if I don't understand them myself?”
“Surrealism will at least have served to prove that total experimentation with sterility and attempts at automatism have gone too far and have led to a totalitarian system… Today, laziness and the total lack of technique have reached their paroxysm in the psychological meaning of the current use of the faculty.”
Major works by Salvador Dalí
1922 - Cabaret Scene and Night Walking Dreams
1925 - Large Harlequin and Small Bottle of Rum
1926 - Basket of Bread and Girl from Figueres
1927 - Composition with Three Figures and Blood Is Sweeter than Honey
1929 - The Great Masturbator
1929 - The First Days of Spring
1931 - The Persistence of Memory
1931 - The Old Age of William Tell
1932 - The Spectre of Sex Appeal
1932 - The Birth of Liquid Desires
1932 - Catalan Bread (Anthropomorphic Bread)
1933 - Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder
1936 - Autumnal Cannibalism
1936 - Soft Construction with Boiled Beans
1938 - España 1938
1937 - Metamorphosis of Narcissus
1937 - The Burning Giraffe
1940 - The Face of War
1943 - Poetry of America
1944 - Galarina and Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Awakening
1945 - Basket of Bread
1946 - The Temptation of Saint Anthony
1949 - Leda Atomica
1949 - The Madonna of Port Lligat
1951 - Christ of Saint John of the Cross
1954 - Crucifixion (“Corpus Hypercubus”)
1956 - Living Still Life
1958 - Meditative Rose
1959 - The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus
1970 - The Hallucinogenic Toreador
1972 - La Toile Daligram
1976 - Gala Contemplating the Sea
1983 - The Swallow's Tail
Source: Pensador UOL, SuaPesquisa
