SALVADOR DALÍ
1904-1989, SpainBeyond the well-known melting clocks and lobster telephone, pioneering surrealist artist Salvador Dalí explored the metaphysical through disciplines including painting, sculpture, film and writing. Blending ideas of psychology with classical artistic techniques, Dalí remains culturally relevant long after his death.
Early Years
Salvador Dalí was born in Figueres, Catalonia, in 1904. He studied art at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, winning a prize in 1922 (although also getting expelled). He staged his first solo show in Barcelona in 1925 and three of his paintings were chosen for the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928.
Dalí first visited Paris in 1926, where he became friends with the Surrealist group including André Breton, and became interested in automatic drawing. He worked with Luis Buñuel on the films Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L’Age d’Or (1930).
Salvador Dalí: Artworks
Dalí’s practice of creating dreamlike imagery from his subconscious was radical, but combining this with his technique, precision and respect for the Old Masters led to artworks that are still considered talking points and that seem to exist beyond the traditional boundaries of time.
- Arguably Dalí’s most famous artwork—and indeed, one of the paintings most often associated with Surrealism—is The Persistence of Memory (1931), in which melting clocks drape over branches and other objects.
- In 1948’s The Elephants, the picture’s pachyderm protagonists appear with extended, elongated legs, pictured in front of a flaming red-orange sky.
- Christ of Saint John on the Cross (1951) is a surprisingly traditional work from Dalí: Christ on the cross floats over a body of water, although without nails or blood, because Dalí dreamed that these would spoil his depiction of Jesus.
Salvador Dalí: Selected Museums
- Dalí Theatre-Museum, Figueres
- Salvador Dalí House Museum, Port Lligat
- Gala Dalí Castle, Pubol
- Salvador Dalí Museum, St Petersburg, Florida
- XPO Salvador Dalí Museum, Bruges
- Dalí Museum, Paris
Salvador Dali: Select Posthumous Exhibitions
- Salvador Dalí Rétrospective 1920–1980, Pompidou Centre, Paris (1979)
- Salvador Dalí, Tate, London (1980)
- 400 works by Salvador Dalí 1914–1983, Museo de Arte Moderno, Madrid (1983)
- Salvador Dalí, 1904–1989, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart and Kunsthaus Zurich (1989)
- Dalí at Tate Modern, London (2007)
- Dalí: Painting and Film, MoMA, New York City (2008)
- Salvador Dalí, Apprentice Painter, Dalí Theatre-Museum, Figueres (2018)
- Salvador Dalí: Magic Art, Fabergé Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2021)
- Dalí Immersive Experience London, Barcelona, Porto, Bruges, Copenhagen, Leipzig (2022–),
Further Reading
- Salvador Dali official website (Spain)
- Salvador Dali official website (US)
- The Salvador Dali Museum
- Artist profile page at Bailly Gallery
Salvador Dalí FAQs
Did Dalí design his own museum?
Yes, Dalí designed the Theatre-Museum in Figueres on the site of the city’s former municipal theatre. It is the world’s largest Surrealist object and was inaugurated in 1974, containing a body of his work mainly selected by the artist himself. “I want my museum to be like a single block, a maze, a great surrealist object,” he said. “It will be an absolutely theatrical museum. The people who come to see it will leave feeling they have had a theatrical dream.”
Who was Salvador Dalí married to?
Salvador Dalí was married to Gala (Elena Ivanovna Diakonova), whom he first met in 1929 when she was married to Paul Éluard, the Surrealist poet. They married twice: at a civil ceremony in 1934 and in Catholic church in 1958. Dalí painted Gala several times, including Imperial Monument to the Child-Woman (1929), Galatea of the Spheres (1952) and Portrait of Gala Dalí looking at the Mediterranean sea which from a distance of 20 metres is transformed into a portrait of Abraham Lincoln (1976).
What’s the significance of food in Salvador Dalí’s art?
Dalí used food frequently in his work, from The Basket of Bread (1926, 1945) to using a 12-metre baguette in a 1958 lecture. Eggs are popular, too: giant eggs sit on top of the Dalí Theatre-Museum and eggs appear in The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937), among other works. And of course, the famous “melting clocks” from 1931’s The Persistence of Memory are said to have been inspired by a piece of Camembert.
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