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Salvador Dali

Better known as the father of Surrealism (or most recognized Surrealist artist), Salvador Dalí was a master of illustrating the subconscious. He sought to explore the realm of the mind and translate his perception onto a canvas of melting clocks, lobster telephones, and barren landscapes. His works on paper, on the other hand, examined similar themes, but engaged the audience in a more intimate and sometimes jarring manner. [Read biography »]

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Salvador Dali Biography

Salvador DaliSalvador Dali (1904 - 1989)

Spanish painter; born in Figueras, Catalonia, where he died in 1989. Trained at Madrid's school of fine arts, he was drawn simultaneously to Academicism, Impressionism, Futurism, and Cubism; after reading Freud, his passions turned to dreams and the unconscious. In 1928, he met Pablo Picasso and Breton and joined the Surrealists. He also met Gala Eluard, who became his companion and muse. In 1929, he began formulating the "paranoid-critical" method, which would provide the foundations for most of his paintings; Construction molle avec haricots bouillis; premonition de la guerre (soft construction with boiled beans; premonition of civil war),1936; Girafes en feu (burning giraffes), 1936-1937. After a stay in the United States from 1940 to 1948, where his influence was felt on fashion, advertising, and ballet sets, he went back to Spain to undergo a religious crisis; Le Christ de Saint-Jean-de-la-Croix, 1951, and returned to the baroque traditions and landscapes of his youth, in harmony with his temperament. His rich and complex personality was revealed through his writings; The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, 1941; Journal of a Genius, 1954. Two enormous retrospectives have been done on him, in the Boymans Van Beuningen Museum of Rotterdam (1970-1971), and at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris (1979-1980). In 1974 he created his own museum in Figureras. Another museum, in Cleveland, houses the Reynold Morse Collection. He was elected to the Beaux-Arts Academy of Paris in 1979.


"In 1936, Dalí returned to a classical manner of painting, switching haphazardly between Italian, Spanish and pompier styles. From 1939 to 1948, he lived in the United States, cultivating his persona as a genial eccentric, and earning from Breton the nickname Avida Dollars (an anagram of his name) in 1940. In Spain once more (at Port Lligat), he provided a constant source of interest for the gossip columns, which described the parties he threw, his carefully orchestrated 'eccentricity' and all the pomp and ceremony of his church wedding in 1958 to Gala (Éluard's first wife), whom he had first met in 1929 and who was to remain the only woman in his life, his muse, his model and his most effective agent.

Why Dali?

Salvador Dali, the suave Spanish Catalan surrealist, displays impeccable draftsmanship and haunting imagery in his oil paintings, original signed drawings, and lithographs.

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Surrealism, Surrealist 20th Century Modern Master

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