Salvador Dali, great Spanish painter, surrealist. Very impressive are his fantasies played out in flat, desert landscapes. Among the famous motifs of Salvador Dali are a huge pocket watch made of some kind of soft material, hanging from a tree branch, flaming giraffes, creepy rearing horses on long thin legs, or a terrifying monster that personifies the nightmares of civil war. But despite the supernatural nature of the plots, the paintings of Salvador Dali are impressive, make you think.
Salvador Dali's full name is Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali y Domenech. Born May 11, 1904 in Figueres - a small town in the north of Catalonia, in the family of a notary. Most of the artist's childhood was spent in a family house near the sea. Here the boy with a rich imagination communicated with local fishermen and workers, listened to their myths, studied the superstitions of his people. Childhood was carefree and cheerful, there was always a younger sister next to him. The only dark spot on this bright page was the early death of his mother.
In 1924-26, Dali received an art education in Madrid, was fond of modern French masters, first of all the Symbolists, and then the Fauvists, Cubists and Futurists, worked in their manner. He is friends with Garcia Lorca, R. Alberti, D. Olonso, L. Buñuel. Together with director L. Bunuel, he directed two surrealistic films.
In the late 1920s, Dali discovered the works of Sigmund Freud, which influenced the artist's work. Like the French surrealists, Dali was looking for ways to express the "highest reality" of the human subconscious. Soon he becomes one of their most prominent representatives.
In 1929, an acquaintance with Gala (Elena Dyakova) takes place. Dali falls madly in love with her, marries, and this marriage awakens in him an inexhaustible fantasy and new inexhaustible energy. The artist's work becomes unusually fruitful. He no longer wants to follow the lessons of other surrealists, he claims: "Surrealist - that's me."
In the 1930s, Dali developed a new way of studying pictorial subjects, which he called the paranoid-critical method. He firmly believes that in order to release deeply hidden thoughts, the mind of a madman is needed. Not being crazy himself, Dali made this statement the foundation of his work.
During the Second World War, Dali and Gala live in the United States. The artist made a fortune here, although in the artistic environment his extravagant canvases were not understood, calling Dali's art an antics in order to attract attention to himself. However, the international fame of the artist was very high, thanks to the extraordinary fruitfulness of the artist in painting, graphics, and also as a designer in jewelry, clothes, costumes for the stage, shop interiors. Dali continued to amaze the public.
In 1974, the Theater Museum of Salvador Dali was opened in Figueres, the project of which was created by the artist himself. Throughout his life, Dali was his constant companion, his muse was Gala, which he needed both physically and morally. When she died in 1982, it dealt him a terrible blow. Dali began to get sick, stopped appearing in society. And on January 23, 1989, Salvador Dali dies of cardiac arrest. Being extravagant to the end, he bequeathed his body not to be buried, but to be left in a crypt, in the Theater Museum in Figueres. He left all his work to Spain
TOpaintings by Salvador Dali
Salvador Dali is considered to be one of the most famous artists last century. His paintings, reflecting an entire era in the spirit of surrealism, are of great artistic value.
In 1924 a young artist Salvador Dali painted portrait close friend of Luis Bonuel. The Spanish film director is depicted as a concentrated man, whose heavy gaze is directed to the side.
The laconic background and gloomy tones enhance the serious atmosphere of the picture. This work is painted in oil in a new technique, reflecting the artist's search in the early period of creativity. The individual style of the master manifested itself in the ability to combine the activity of the form and psychological characteristics. Today the canvas "Portrait of Luis Bonuel" kept at the Arts Center in Madrid .
The most famous work of Dali is the painting "The Persistence of Memory" established in 1931. 
Working on landscape near Port Ligata, the artist saw an unexpected continuation of the composition. The idea in El Salvador's head gave rise to the appearance of cheese melting in the heat. So, against the backdrop of a rocky coast and a lonely olive tree, “soft” watches appeared. The content of the canvas is filled with symbolic images, reminiscent of the transience of the time allotted to a person. In its own way, the work is a harbinger of the scientific and technical period in Dali's work. Since 1934, the painting has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
One of the original creations of a genius –
painting . 
This work was painted in gouache on newsprint in 1935 and was dedicated to the famous American actress May West. The portrait of a woman is presented in the form of a room: the composition is made up of hair-curtains, a nose-fireplace, eyes-pictures and a sofa in the shape of lips.
Such a creative solution exists not only on paper, but also as an installation in the Dali Museum in Figueres.
In 1936, Spain was on the verge of a civil war when over Madrid
clouds were gathering. It was the alarming state of the motherland that prompted Salvador Dali to create a painting "A malleable structure with boiled beans". 
At the heart of the composition is a monstrous construction of parts of the human body, dominating above the ground. The absurdity of the depicted, complemented by boiled beans scattered below, evokes a feeling of confusion and misunderstanding. Painting located in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Job "The Last Supper" was painted in 1955 under the influence of Renaissance art, especially Leonardo da Vinci.
The plot is based on the biblical story about the last meal of Jesus with the apostles on the eve of the crucifixion. A note of modernity is introduced by the look of the modernist interior and glass walls, and the optical game is based on the tangibility of the figures of the disciples and the transparency of the depicted Christ. The painting is exhibited at the National Gallery in Washington.
Gala's wife had a huge influence on the master's work. Despite the difficult relationship of this couple, Salvador Dali painted a huge number of paintings depicting his wife. In 1975 he created the greatest illusion "Nude Gala looking at the sea". The view of the artist's naked wife against the backdrop of a seascape, when viewed at a distance of 18 meters, turns into a portrait of American President Abraham Lincoln.
Here the digital method was used for the first time. The painting is kept in Figueres.
The hand of Salvador Dali belongs to almost 1500 works, of which only a part is represented by paintings. Other works are book illustrations, sculptures, costumes, scenery and jewelry.
Salvador Dali - "Self-portrait with a Raphaelian neck."
Salvador Dali - "Rhinoceros figure of Fideev's Illis".
Salvador Dali - "Flesh on the Stones"
Salvador Dali - In Search of the Fourth Dimension.
Surrealism is the complete freedom of a human being and his right to dream. I am not a surrealist, I am surrealism, - S. Dali.
The formation of Dali's artistic skill took place in the era of early modernity, when his contemporaries largely represented such new artistic movements as expressionism and cubism.
In 1929, the young artist joined the Surrealists. This year marked an important turn in his life as Salvador Dali met Gala. She became his mistress, wife, muse, model and main inspiration.
Since he was a brilliant draftsman and colorist, Dali drew much inspiration from the old masters. But he used extravagant forms and inventive ways to compose an entirely new, modern and innovative style of art. His paintings are notable for their use of double images, ironic scenes, optical illusions, dreamlike landscapes and deep symbolism.
Throughout his creative life, Dali was never limited to one direction. He worked with oils and watercolors, created drawings and sculptures, films and photographs. Even the variety of forms of execution was not alien to the artist, including the creation of jewelry and other works of applied art. As a screenwriter, Dali collaborated with the famous director Luis Buñuel, who made the films The Golden Age and The Andalusian Dog. They displayed unrealistic scenes, reminiscent of the revived paintings of a surrealist.
The prolific and extremely gifted master left a huge legacy for future generations of artists and art lovers. Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation launched an online project Catalog Raisonné of Salvador Dali for a complete scientific cataloging of the paintings created by Salvador Dali between 1910 and 1983. The catalog consists of five sections divided according to the timeline. It was conceived not only to provide comprehensive information about the artist's work, but also to determine the authorship of works, since Salvador Dali is one of the most forged painters.
These 17 examples of his surrealistic paintings testify to the fantastic talent, imagination and skill of the eccentric Salvador Dali.
1. "Ghost of Vermeer of Delft, which can be used as a table", 1934
This small painting with a rather long original title embodies Dali's admiration for the great 17th century Flemish master, Jan Vermeer. Vermeer's self-portrait is executed taking into account Dali's surrealistic vision.
2. "The Great Masturbator", 1929
The painting depicts the internal struggle of feelings caused by the attitude towards sexual intercourse. This perception of the artist arose as an awakened childhood memory when he saw a book left by his father, open to a page depicting genitals affected by venereal diseases.
3. "Giraffe on fire", 1937
The artist completed this work before moving to the USA in 1940. Although the master claimed that the painting was apolitical, it, like many others, reflects the deep and unsettling feelings of unease and horror that Dali must have experienced during the turbulent period between the two world wars. A certain part reflects his internal struggle regarding the Spanish Civil War, and also refers to Freud's method of psychological analysis.
4. "The Face of War", 1940
The agony of war is also reflected in the work of Dali. He believed that his painting should contain omens of war, which we see in a deadly head stuffed with skulls.
5. "Sleep", 1937
It depicts one of the surreal phenomena - a dream. This is a fragile, unstable reality in the world of the subconscious.
6. Appearance of a face and a bowl of fruit on the seashore, 1938
This fantastic painting is especially interesting, since the author uses double images in it, endowing the image itself with a multi-level meaning. Metamorphoses, amazing juxtapositions of objects and hidden elements characterize Dali's surrealist paintings.
7. The Persistence of Memory, 1931
This is perhaps the most recognizable surrealistic painting by Salvador Dali, which embodies softness and hardness, symbolizes the relativity of space and time. To a large extent, it relies on Einstein's theory of relativity, although Dali said that the idea for the picture was born at the sight of Camembert cheese melted in the sun.
8. The Three Sphinxes of Bikini Island, 1947
This surreal depiction of Bikini Atoll evokes the memory of the war. Three symbolic sphinxes occupy different planes: a human head, a split tree and a mushroom of a nuclear explosion, speaking of the horrors of war. The painting explores the relationship between three subjects.
9. "Galatea with spheres", 1952
The portrait of Dali's wife is presented through an array of spherical shapes. Gala is like a portrait of the Madonna. The artist, inspired by science, elevated Galatea above the tangible world to the upper etheric layers.
10. Melted Clock, 1954
Another depiction of a time-measuring object has been given an ethereal softness that is not typical of a hard pocket watch.
11. “My naked wife, contemplating her own flesh, which has turned into a staircase, into three vertebrae of a column, into the sky and into architecture”, 1945
Gala from the back. This remarkable image has become one of the most eclectic works of Dali, where classic and surrealism, calm and strangeness are combined.
12. "Soft construction with boiled beans", 1936
The second name of the picture is “Premonition of the Civil War”. It depicts the alleged horrors of the Spanish Civil War, as the artist painted it six months before the conflict began. This was one of Salvador Dali's forebodings.
13. "The Birth of Liquid Desires", 1931-32
We see one example of a paranoid-critical approach to art. Images of father and possibly mother are mixed with a grotesque, unreal image of a hermaphrodite in the middle. The picture is filled with symbolism.
14. "The Riddle of Desire: My mother, my mother, my mother", 1929
This work, created on Freudian principles, became an example of Dali's relationship with his mother, whose distorted body appears in the Dalinian desert.
15. Untitled - Fresco painting design for Helena Rubinstein, 1942
The image was created for the interior decoration of the premises by order of Helena Rubinstein. This is a frankly surreal picture from the world of fantasy and dreams. The artist was inspired by classical mythology.
16. "Sodom self-satisfaction of an innocent maiden", 1954
The painting depicts a female figure and an abstract background. The artist explores the issue of repressed sexuality, which follows from the title of the work and the phallic forms that often appear in Dali's work.
17. Geopolitical Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, 1943
The artist expressed his skepticism by painting this painting while in the United States. The shape of the ball seems to be a symbolic incubator of the "new" man, the man of the "new world".
Salvador Dali (full name Salvador Dominech Felipe Jacinto Dali and Domenech, Marquis de Dali de Pubol, cat. Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí de Púbol, Spanish Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí y de Púbol; May 11, 1904 (19040511), Figueres - January 23, 1989, Figueres) - Spanish painter, graphic artist, sculptor, director, writer. One of the most famous representatives of surrealism.
Worked on films: "Andalusian Dog", "Golden Age" (directed by Luis Buñuel), "Bewitched" (directed by Alfred Hitchcock). Author of The Secret Life of Salvador Dali as Told by Himself (1942), The Diary of a Genius (1952-1963), Oui: The Paranoid-Critical Revolution (1927-33) and the essay The Tragic Myth of Angelus Millet.
Salvador Dali was born in Spain on May 11, 1904 in the city of Figueres, province of Girona, in the family of a wealthy notary. He was a Catalan by nationality, perceived himself in this capacity and insisted on this peculiarity. He had a sister, Anna Maria Dalí (Spanish: Anna Maria Dalí, January 6, 1908 - May 16, 1989), and an older brother (October 12, 1901 - August 1, 1903), who died of meningitis. Later, at the age of 5, at his grave, his parents told Salvador that he was the reincarnation of his older brother.
As a child, Dali was a quick-witted, but arrogant and uncontrollable child. One day, he started a row in the marketplace for a candy, a crowd gathered around, and the police asked the owner of the shop to open it during a siesta and give the boy a sweet. He achieved his whims and simulation, always sought to stand out and attract attention.
Numerous complexes and phobias, for example, the fear of grasshoppers, prevented him from being included in ordinary school life, from making ordinary bonds of friendship and sympathy with children. But, like any person, experiencing sensory hunger, he sought emotional contact with children by any means, trying to get used to their team, if not in the role of a comrade, then in any other role, or rather the only one that he was capable of - in the role shocking and naughty child, strange, eccentric, always acting contrary to other people's opinions. When he lost at school games of chance, he acted like he had won and triumphed. Sometimes he got into fights for no reason.
Classmates treated the "strange" child rather intolerantly, used his fear of grasshoppers, slipped these insects into his collar, which drove Salvador to hysteria, which he later told in his book "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, told by himself."
Dali began studying fine art at the municipal art school. From 1914 to 1918 he was educated at the Academy of the Brothers of the Marist Order in Figueres. One of his childhood friends was the future football player of FC Barcelona, Josep Samitier. In 1916, with the family of Ramon Picho, he went on vacation to the city of Cadaques, where he got acquainted with modern art.
In 1921, at the age of 47, Dali's mother died of breast cancer. For Dali, this was a tragedy. The same year, he enters the San Fernando Academy. The drawing prepared by him for the exam seemed too small to the caretaker, about which he informed his father, and he, in turn, to his son. Young Salvador erased the entire drawing from the canvas and decided to draw a new one. But he had only 3 days left before the final assessment. However, the young man was in no hurry to work, which greatly worried his father, who had already endured his quirks for many years. In the end, young Dali said that the drawing was ready, but it was even smaller than the previous one, and this was a blow to his father. However, the teachers, due to their extremely high skill, made an exception and accepted the young eccentric into the academy.
This is part of a Wikipedia article used under the CC-BY-SA license. Full text of the article here →
Salvador Dali is rightfully considered one of the most famous representatives of surrealism. There is no person in the world who has not even glimpsed his paintings.
"Surrealism is me"- Salvador DaliSalvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904 in the Catalan city of Fineras. As a child, Salvador was a bright but very stubborn child who got into trouble more than once. Young Salvador always tried to stand out, but due to a large number of phobias, he could not find a common language with his peers. Salvador began his training in artistic skill at school in 1914.
In 1921, Salvador Dali entered the Academy of San Fernando, where he continued to study painting. Despite his undeniable talent, Dali was expelled from the Academy in 1926, again due to unbearable behavior.
After the young artist goes to Paris, where he meets Pablo Picasso, who greatly influenced his work in subsequent years. In Paris, Salvador meets his future wife Gala.
Gradually, fame comes to Dali, his paintings are exhibited, later he joins the group of surrealists, from which he leaves with a scandal in 1936. Everyone around was struck by the actions and views of Dali.
However, few people think about what these actions really meant. Dali rarely tried to offend anyone, he just lived in a different world, the world of surrealism. And it can be characterized only through the prism of surrealistic concepts.
Having visited Italy, Dali was delighted with the creations of the Renaissance, which could not but affect his future work. With the outbreak of World War II, Dali decides to move to the United States with his wife, where he actively collaborates with directors and film companies. Unfortunately, many of the ideas proposed by the artist were deemed inappropriate and never saw the light of day.
Then Dali returned to Spain, then again conquered Paris. His work was not limited to paintings. The artist was engaged in films, advertising, costumes. In every idea he found a way to express himself.
In 1981, the artist begins to develop Parkinson's disease, and a year later, Gala dies, which plunges the artist into a prolonged depression that affected his work. His illness developed preventing him from living and painting. Dali moves to the castle, when presented to Gala, but after an accident leaves for the theater-museum, where he meets his death in 1989.
Salvador Dali is not just a talented artist, he is an exceptional personality, shaped in many ways by his talent and his phobias. Each of his paintings is priceless and it is not possible to choose the best among them. Therefore, we decided to opt for those paintings by the artist, which are considered his most famous works.
