The Life Of Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali was born on 11 May 1904 at Figueras in Catalonia, Spain. Dali started going to drawing school and had his first public exhibition, in 1919, at the Municipal Theater in Figueras.

Dali's mother died of breast cancer, in February 1921, when he was sixteen years old. It was a great blow that he experienced in his life.

In 1922, Dali started to study at the School of Fine Arts, in Madrid. He started to experiment with Cubist painting and Dada. Just before his final exams, in 1926, he was expelled from the School of Fine Arts because he had said that no one on the faculty was competent enough to examine him. Also in 1926 Dali visited Paris for the first time and met Pablo Picasso. Over the next few years Dali made several works that were strongly influenced by Picasso and Joan Miro.

Dali officially joined the Surrealist group in 1929. Dali's work had been strongly influenced by surrealism for the past two years, and had developed his paranoiac-critical method which involves accessing the subconcious for greater artistic creativity. Dali also had some important exhibitions in 1929. In December 1929 Dali's father threw him out of the home after a big argument. In the summer of 1930 Dali and Gala (his future wife) rented a small fisherman's cabin at Port Lligat, not far from his original home. Later he bought the property and expanded it over the years.

One of Dali's best known works was painted in 1931, it is titled The Persistence of Memory and shows soft, melting pocket watches. The inspiration for the soft watches came from when he was eating ripe camembert cheese. The meaning of the painting is that the assumption that time is rigid is rejected.

In 1934 Dali and Gala got married. Also that year Dali had an exhibition in New York that was a great success. Later in 1934 Dali was expelled from the Surrealist group, and his answer to this was "I myself am surrealism."

Dali exhibited in the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936. He delivered a lecture while wearing a deep-sea diving suit and helmet, and had to have the helmet unscrewed while he struggled to breathe.

At this point in time Dali's main patron, in London, was Edward James who was very wealthy. He bought many of Dali's works and for two years supported him financially. Also they collaborated on the Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa. In 1937 Dali painted one of his most intense pictures titled The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. It is a classic work of Surrealism.

Dali met Sigmund Freud (who was an influence on Dali), in London, in 1938. In 1940, Dali and Gala moved to the United States and stayed there for eight years. During this period Dali practiced Catholicism. In 1942 Dali's autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvado Dali, was published. In 1944 Dali wrote a novel about a fashion salon for automobiles.

From 1949 onwards Dali spent his time in Catalonia, Spain. He did not restrict himself to just painting but also experimented with unusual and novel media. For example he was one of the first artists to use holography in an artistic way, and some of his works have optical illusions. The period after World War 2 Dali described as Nuclear Mysticism, as Dali became a more devout Catholic and was inspired by the atomic age. In this period his work shows technical virtuosity and an interest in religion, science and optical illusions. Good examples of paintings of this period include The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968-1970) and La Gare de Perpignan (1965).

From 1960 to 1974 Dali mainly worked on the Dali Theatre and Museum in Figueras. Dali's health deteriorated in 1980. His nervous system had been damaged by being given a dangerous mixture of unprescribed drugs by his wife Gala. His hands trembled a lot.

In 1978 Dali was elected to the Beaux-Arts Academy. King Juan Carlos bestowed on Dali the title of Marquis of Dali de Pubol, in 1982.

On 10 June 1982 Gala died at their castle in Pubol. When Dali was 80, in 1983, he was severely burnt in a fire at his home. In November 1988 Dali went to hospital with heart failure, and on 23 January 1989 he died of heart failure at Figueras. He was 84 years old.

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Salvador Dali's Elephants

Salvador Dali's elephants refer to several surrealist depictions that he made of these impressive animals in a selection of some of his most famous paintings. This article uncovers which paintings made use of his symbolic elephants and explains why they were used plus the ways in which he stretched their appearances beyond reality to match his own surrealist style.

Salvador Dali used elephants within Les Elephants, Swans Reflecting Elephants, Temptation of St Anthony and Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate. Dali deliberately elongated the legs of each elephant as well as adding objects to their backs which created a heightened sense of weight upon them. It was Dali's intention to use this stretched reality to create his surrealist environment where further objects could be added in on top.

Les Elephants is certainly the best known example of where Salvador Dali would use this animal, with this painting offering only these symbolic objects walking across a bright yellow and orange background that itself is overwhelming in beauty and helps to make this a highly memorable painting. Dali managed to get a huge amount of detail into each of the paintings mentioned here which makes it surprising when you learn that each of them is relatively small and certainly smaller than canvases from other significant artists from across the contemporary periods of the 20th century. They are also therefore easy to reproduce as the original sizes are also suitable for display in most homes who request copies of it.

We can conclude that elephants were an important topic for Salvador Dali who installed them in several of his key works and used them to help create his surrealist style that marked some of the biggest advancements in new art movements across the whole of the 20th century. Dali's achievements within art were incredible and as creative as they were diverse across different art media. Fortunately much of it has been collected together and stored in several museums around Europe and North America which make excellent ways to spend a few hours for those lucky enough to be in their vicinity.

For those unable to get to see his impressive original oil paintings in person, Dali reproduction copies are exceptionally popular in the modern day which framed art prints, posters and stretched canvases being frequently ordered for those who want to appreciate his finest paintings within their own homes. These offer flexibility with different sizes and formats available.

You can buy Salvador Dali Elephants from Salvadordalielephants.com which also offers a large gallery of the artist's most famous paintings.

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Salvador Dali's Clocks

Salvador Dali added melting clocks to several of his most important paintings and this article discusses the symbolism of the clocks as well as covering the full career highlights of this talented Spanish painter who dominated the 20th century art scene.

There is there controversial disagreements over the reasons for Dali's use of melting clocks which some explaining that they represent his own views on the Theory of Relativity whilst others are convinced that the ideas simply came from a piece of melting French cheese that the artist witnessed just before starting the painting. As with much of Dali's surrealist career, many question marks still remain but this helps to add further interest and mystery to this truly unique artist who remains just as popular today as he was at any point in the 20th century.

Melting clocks were used by Salvador Dali within Persistence of Memory and Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory and these are two highly respected painting from his career, serving as great examples of his work within the art movement of surrealism. Besides these two paintings which made use of his melting clock symbolism, other crucial works included Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra, Swans Reflecting Elephants, Female Figure with Head of Flowers, The Ship, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Burning Giraffes in Brown, Landscape with Butterflies, Spain and Soft Construction with Boiled Beans.

Salvador Dali was a hugely flexible artist who sought as many different avenues for his creativity as possible, going on to achieve success in many art media such as Painting, Drawing, Photography, Sculpture, Writing and Film. Dali has become known as one of the most important painters from the 20th century in any art movement and his achievements will be remembered for centuries to come thanks to the museums which have been set up in his name plus the great international exposure that his career has already enjoyed. Reflecting this success is the fact that his original paintings demand extraordinary prices on the very rare occasions that they come available for sale.

It is clear that Salvador Dali's melting clocks have great symbolism within several of his paintings and are good examples of this deep thinking artist and how he would put so much preparation and study into each of his paintings, with surrealism offering the ideal opportunity to produce work that goes beyond the boundaries of reality, which helpfully matched his own creative and highly intelligent mind.

You can buy Salvador Dali Clocks from Salvadordaliclocks.com as reproduction art prints, plus read further information on all the paintings mentioned in this article alongside large images of Dali's most famous paintings.

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