Salvador Dali
Salvador Dali was a Spanish Surrealist artist known for the outlandish nature of his creations. Apart from painting, Dali was also into filmmaking, sculpture and photography. He was also an accomplished writer, creating works of fiction revolving around themes of the subconscious, religion and science. His eccentricity was often the focal point of his life and did sometimes take attention away from the quality of his work.
History and Career
Dali was born in 1904 in Figueres, Spain, to a lawyer and notary. Unfortunately, his elder brother passed away just nine months before his birth. This loss would often feature in his future works as the specter of his passing haunted him.
Dali’s mother encouraged him to pursue artistry, and he attended the Municipal Drawing School at Figueres in 1916, going on to have his first public show in 1918. He continued working on his art in the following years and it is about this time that he was introduced to futurism and cubism. Salvador Dali lost his mother in 1921, and his father remarried her sister soon after. The loss of his mother was a sore blow to Dali and another factor that influenced his future works.
In 1922 Dali enrolled in San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts where he joined the avant-garde group Ultra. He would spend days at the Prado Museum, studying famous artworks, and it was at this time that he started employing cubism in his works, earning him significant recognition. He would hold his first solo exhibition in 1925.
A trip to Paris in 1926 would put him in touch with Pablo Picasso, an artist he revered. His other classical influences included Bronzino, Raphael, Vermeer and Velasquez. Around this time, Joan Miro introduced him to surrealism, and that style slowly started seeping into his work. 1929 would be a pivotal year for the artist - he held his first exhibition in Paris, met his future wife Gala and was expelled from home because of his surrealist tendencies.
By 1931, Dali had moved in with Gala in a quaint fisherman’s cabin in Port Lligat. Here he would create possibly his most famous work, ‘The persistence of memory’. Dali would marry Gala, who became his primary muse, in 1934, a year after his first New York exhibition. He would go on to have more exhibitions in New York and London and even gained the patronage of the Zodiac group – a group of wealthy businessmen.
The outbreak of World War II in 1939 saw the Dalis flee to the United States of America via Portugal. Here he would renounce surrealism and embrace classicism again to a lukewarm public response. Salvador Dali would also begin work on his autobiography, which would be published in 1942. He would engage in commercial endeavors from set design to product design through the following years till 1945.
In 1948, Dali and Gala moved back to their home in Port Lligat. His support of the Francoist regime in Spain led him to be ostracized from art circles, with Picasso even refusing to acknowledge his existence for the rest of his life. It was around 1949 that Dali began to more thoroughly embrace Catholicism which also led to a tonal shift in his work towards more religious themes.
In 1960, Salvador Dali began work on his greatest project – a theater museum in his hometown of Figueres. The project would focus his attention for a decade and a half till 1974. Dali’s health began to fail him by 1976, and he was treated for drug addiction and depression. A possible factor that led to this was his fear of estrangement from Gala, who would often disappear to a castle he purchased for weeks at a time. Gala passed away in 1982 and Dali’s health continued to deteriorate. He would make his last painting in 1983.
Dali passed away from cardiac arrest in 1989 at the age of 84. He is buried in a tomb beneath his theater museum.
Legacy
Dali has had a lasting impact on pop art the world over. His flamboyant, larger-than-life personality may have detracted from his work, but his contribution to the art scene has been immense. His life has been the subject of books and films, and his works are some of the most iconic in history.
There are two major museums dedicated to his work, one in his hometown of Figueres and another in Florida, USA. He even has a crater on Mercury named after him. Even something as trivial as his mustache, with its drastically exaggerated curvature, is instantly recognizable today.
Famous Works
Salvador Dali, while being primarily a Surrealist painter, did incorporate other styles into his work. An admirer of Freud, he was a pioneer in incorporating repressed desires in his paintings. His interest in science and math would also bleed into his work with his interest in atomic theory taking center stage in several of his creations.
Contemporaries
René Magritte was a Belgian Surrealist artist and a member of the Surrealist group that also had Dali as a member. His work has had a lasting impact on minimalist art and he is best known for portraying day to day objects in unusual circumstances, thus blurring the line between the imagined and the real.
Joan Miro was a Spanish artist from Barcelona. Another member of the Surrealist group, his paintings are known for blurring the worlds between the unconscious and subconscious mind. His works were fueled by childlike abandon and have had a lasting effect on the abstract expressionist style the world over.