Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Spain - 1904 - 1989

Spanish, b. 1904

Salvador Dalí was one of the most renowned artists of the 20th century. The Persistence of Memory(1931), arguably his most famous painting, shows the visual manifestation of psychoanalysis, where clocks melt into a landscape of indeterminate time or place. Dalí’s outlandish persona granted him notoriety that often overshadowed his work. A self-proclaimed genius, he believed Pablo Picasso to be his only equal. “One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams,” he said. Born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech on May 11, 1904 in Figueres, Spain, he displayed a great aptitude for the visual arts as a teenager. Three years after his first exhibition at 14, Dalí enrolled in Madrid’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in San Fernando. Influenced by Old Masters Johannes Vermeer and Diego Velázquez, Dalí excelled in realist painting. In the late 1920s fellow Catalan Joan Miró introduced him to the Surrealists in France, including Jean Arp, René Magritte, and Max Ernst. Dabbling in various projects throughout his long career, in 1973 Dalí published a Surrealist cookbook titled Les Les dîners de Gala, an extravagant musing on the pleasures of food. The artist died on January 23, 1989 in his hometown of Figueres, Spain. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Reina Sofia National Museum in Madrid, and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, among others.

Sources:
Photo: http://m80.iol.pt/noticias/body.aspx?id=70670
Text: http://www.artnet.com/artists/salvador-dal%C3%AD/

Artist Works

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