In early August 1929, young Dali met his future wife and muse Gala. Their union became the key to the incredible success of the artist, influencing all his subsequent work, including the painting "The Persistence of Memory".
(1) soft watch- a symbol of non-linear, subjective time, arbitrarily flowing and unevenly filling space. The three clocks in the picture are past, present and future. “You asked me,” Dali wrote to physicist Ilya Prigogine, “whether I was thinking about Einstein when I was drawing a soft watch (meaning the theory of relativity. - Approx. ed.). I answer you in the negative, the fact is that the connection between space and time was absolutely obvious to me for a long time, so there was nothing special in this picture for me, it was the same as any other ... To this I can add that I I thought about Heraclitus (an ancient Greek philosopher who believed that time is measured by the flow of thought. - Approx. ed.). That is why my painting is called The Persistence of Memory. Memory of the relationship of space and time.
(2) Blurred object with eyelashes. This is a self-portrait of a sleeping Dali. The world in the picture is his dream, the death of the objective world, the triumph of the unconscious. “The relationship between sleep, love and death is obvious,” the artist wrote in his autobiography. “Sleep is death, or at least it is an exclusion from reality, or, even better, it is the death of reality itself, which dies in the same way during the act of love.” According to Dali, sleep frees the subconscious, so the artist's head blurs like a clam - this is evidence of his defenselessness. Only Gala, he will say after the death of his wife, “knowing my defenselessness, hid my hermit oyster pulp in a fortress-shell, and thus saved it.”
(3) solid watch - lie on the left with the dial down - a symbol of objective time.
(4) Ants- a symbol of decay and decay. According to Nina Getashvili, a professor at the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, “the childhood impression of a wounded bat infested with ants, as well as the artist’s own memory of a bathing baby with ants in the anus endowed the artist with the obsessive presence of this insect in his painting. (“I loved to nostalgically recall this action, which actually did not happen,” the artist writes in “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, told by himself.” - Approx. ed.). On the clock on the left, the only one that has retained its hardness, the ants also create a clear cyclic structure, obeying the divisions of the chronometer. However, this does not obscure the meaning that the presence of ants is still a sign of decay.” According to Dali, linear time devours itself.
(5) Fly. According to Nina Getashvili, “the artist called them fairies of the Mediterranean. In The Diary of a Genius, Dali wrote: "They carried inspiration to the Greek philosophers who spent their lives under the sun, covered in flies."
(6) Olive. For the artist, this is a symbol of ancient wisdom, which, unfortunately, has already sunk into oblivion (therefore, the tree is depicted dry).
(7) Cape Creus. This cape on the Catalan coast of the Mediterranean Sea, near the city of Figueres, where Dali was born. The artist often depicted him in paintings. “Here,” he wrote, “the most important principle of my theory of paranoid metamorphoses (the flow of one delusional image into another. - Approx. ed.) is embodied in rock granite... new ones - you just need to slightly change the angle of view.
(8) Sea for Dali it symbolized immortality and eternity. The artist considered it an ideal space for traveling, where time does not flow at an objective speed, but in accordance with the internal rhythms of the traveler's consciousness.
(9) Egg. According to Nina Getashvili, the World Egg in Dali's work symbolizes life. The artist borrowed his image from the Orphics - ancient Greek mystics. According to Orphic mythology, the first androgynous deity Phanes was born from the World Egg, who created people, and heaven and earth were formed from the two halves of its shell.
(10) Mirror lying horizontally to the left. It is a symbol of variability and inconstancy, obediently reflecting both the subjective and objective world.
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History of creation
They say that Dali was a little out of his mind. Yes, he suffered from paranoia. But without this, there would be no Dali as an artist. He had mild delirium, expressed in the appearance in the mind of dream images that the artist could transfer to the canvas. The thoughts that visited Dali during the creation of paintings were always bizarre (it was not for nothing that he was fond of psychoanalysis), and a vivid example of this is the story of the appearance of one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory (New York, Museum of Modern Art). It was the summer of 1931 in Paris, when Dali was preparing for a solo exhibition. After seeing his common-law wife Gala with friends at the cinema, “I,” Dali writes in his memoirs, “returned to the table (we finished dinner with an excellent Camembert) and plunged into thoughts about the spreading pulp. Cheese popped into my mind's eye. I got up and, as usual, went to the studio - to look at the picture I was painting before going to bed. It was the landscape of Port Lligat in the transparent, sad sunset light. In the foreground is the bare skeleton of an olive tree with a broken branch. I felt that in this picture I managed to create an atmosphere consonant with some important image - but what? I have not the foggiest idea. I needed a marvelous image, but I did not find it. I went to turn off the light, and when I got out, I literally saw the solution: two pairs of soft clocks, they hang plaintively from an olive branch. Despite the migraine, I prepared my palette and set to work. Two hours later, by the time Gala returned, the most famous of my paintings was finished. |
Photo: M.FLYNN/ALAMY/DIOMEDIA, CARL VAN VECHTEN/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Salvador Dali - Persistence of memory (Spanish: La persistencia de la memoria).
Year of creation: 1931
Canvas, handmade tapestry.
Original size: 24×33cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York
« The Persistence of Memory”(Spanish: La persistencia de la memoria, 1931) is one of the most famous paintings by the artist Salvador Dali. It has been in the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1934.
Also known as " soft watch», « Hardness of memory" or " Memory Persistence».
This small painting (24×33 cm) is probably Dali's most famous work. The softness of the hanging and flowing clock is an image that could be described as: "it spreads into the realm of the unconscious, enlivening the universal human experience of time and memory." Dali himself is present here in the form of a sleeping head, which has already appeared in The Funeral Game and other paintings. In accordance with his method, the artist explained the origin of the plot by thinking about the nature of Camembert cheese; the landscape with Port Ligat was already ready, so it was a matter of two hours to paint the picture. Returning from the cinema, where she went that evening, Gala quite correctly predicted that no one, having seen The Persistence of Memory once, would forget it. The picture was painted as a result of the associations that arose in Dali at the sight of processed cheese, as evidenced by his own quote.
Description of the painting by Salvador Dali “The Persistence of Memory”
The greatest representative of surrealism in painting, Salvador Dali, truly skillfully combined mystery and evidence. This amazing Spanish artist executed his paintings in a manner inherent only to him, sharpened life's questions with the help of an original and opposite combination of real and fantastic.
One of the most famous paintings, known by several names, is most often found - "The Persistence of Memory", but is also known as "Soft Hours", "The Hardness of Memory" or "The Persistence of Memory".
This is a very small picture of time arbitrarily flowing and unevenly filling space. The artist himself explained that the emergence of this plot is associated with associations when thinking about the nature of processed cheese.
It all starts with a landscape, it takes up little space on the canvas. In the distance one can see the desert and the sea coast, perhaps this is a reflection of the inner emptiness of the artist. There are still three clocks in the picture, but they are flowing. This is a temporary space through which the flow of life flows, but it can change.
Most of the artist's paintings, their ideas, content, subtext, became known from the notes in the diaries of Salvador Dali. But what is the opinion of the artist himself about this picture is not found, not a single line. There are many opinions about what the artist wanted to convey to us. There are some so contradictory that this saggy watch speaks of Dali's fears, perhaps in front of any male problems. But, despite all these assumptions, the picture is very popular, thanks to the originality of the surrealist direction.
Most often, the word surrealism refers to Dali, and his painting “The Persistence of Memory” comes to mind. Now this work is in New York, you can see it at the Museum of Modern Art.
The idea for the work came to Dali on a hot summer day. He lay at home with a headache, and Gala went shopping. After eating, Dali noticed that the cheese melted from the heat, became fluid. It somehow coincided with what Dali had in his soul. The artist had a desire to paint a landscape with a melting clock. He returned to the unfinished painting he was working on at the time, which showed a tree on a platform with mountains in the background. Within two or three hours, Salvador Dali hung a melted pocket watch on the painting, which made the painting what it is today.
Salvador Dali
The Persistence of Memory 1931
History of creation
It was the summer of 1931 in Paris, when Dali was preparing for a solo exhibition. After spending Gala with friends at the cinema, “I,” writes Dali in his memoirs, “returned to the table (we finished dinner with an excellent Camembert) and plunged into thoughts about the spreading pulp. Cheese popped into my mind's eye. I got up and, as usual, went to the studio to look at the picture I was painting before going to bed. It was the landscape of Port Lligat in the transparent, sad sunset light. In the foreground is the bare skeleton of an olive tree with a broken branch.
I felt that in this picture I managed to create an atmosphere consonant with some important image - but what? I have not the foggiest idea. I needed a marvelous image, but I did not find it. I went to turn off the light, and when I got out, I literally saw the solution: two pairs of soft clocks, they hang plaintively from an olive branch. Despite the migraine, I prepared my palette and set to work. Two hours later, by the time Gala returned, the most famous of my paintings was finished.
In early August 1929, young Dali met his future wife and muse Gala. Their union became the key to the incredible success of the artist, influencing all his subsequent work, including the painting "The Persistence of Memory".
Salvador Dali and Gala in Cadaqués. 1930 Photo: courtesy of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin
History of creation
They say that Dali was a little out of his mind. Yes, he suffered from paranoia. But without this, there would be no Dali as an artist. He had mild delirium, expressed in the appearance in the mind of dream images that the artist could transfer to the canvas. The thoughts that visited Dali during the creation of paintings were always bizarre (it was not for nothing that he was fond of psychoanalysis), and a vivid example of this is the story of the appearance of one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory (New York, Museum of Modern Art).
It was the summer of 1931 in Paris, when Dali was preparing for a solo exhibition. After seeing his common-law wife Gala with friends at the cinema, “I,” Dali writes in his memoirs, “returned to the table (we finished dinner with an excellent Camembert) and plunged into thoughts about the spreading pulp. Cheese popped into my mind's eye. I got up and, as usual, went to the studio - to look at the picture I was painting before going to bed. It was the landscape of Port Lligat in the transparent, sad sunset light. In the foreground is the bare skeleton of an olive tree with a broken branch.I felt that in this picture I managed to create an atmosphere consonant with some important image - but what? I have not the foggiest idea. I needed a marvelous image, but I did not find it. I went to turn off the light, and when I got out, I literally saw the solution: two pairs of soft clocks, they hang plaintively from an olive branch. Despite the migraine, I prepared my palette and set to work. Two hours later, by the time Gala returned, the most famous of my paintings was finished.
(1) Soft watch- a symbol of non-linear, subjective time, arbitrarily flowing and unevenly filling space. The three clocks in the picture are past, present and future. “You asked me,” Dali wrote to physicist Ilya Prigogine, “did I think about Einstein when I painted soft watches ( I mean the theory of relativity. - Approx. ed.). I answer you in the negative, the fact is that the connection between space and time was absolutely obvious to me for a long time, so there was nothing special in this picture for me, it was the same as any other ... To this I can add that I thinking about Heraclitus an ancient Greek philosopher who believed that time is measured by the flow of thought. - Approx. ed.). That is why my painting is called The Persistence of Memory. Memory of the relationship of space and time.
(2) Blurred object with eyelashes. This is a self-portrait of a sleeping Dali. The world in the picture is his dream, the death of the objective world, the triumph of the unconscious. “The relationship between sleep, love and death is obvious,” the artist wrote in his autobiography. “Sleep is death, or at least it is an exclusion from reality, or, even better, it is the death of reality itself, which dies in the same way during the act of love.” According to Dali, sleep frees the subconscious, so the artist's head blurs like a clam - this is evidence of his defenselessness. Only Gala, he will say after the death of his wife, “knowing my defenselessness, hid my hermit oyster pulp in a fortress-shell, and thus saved it.”
(3) Solid watch- lie on the left with the dial down - a symbol of objective time.
(4) Ants- a symbol of decay and decay. According to Nina Getashvili, a professor at the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, “the childhood impression of a wounded bat infested with ants, as well as the artist’s own memory of a bathing baby with ants in the anus endowed the artist with the obsessive presence of this insect in his painting. ( “I loved to nostalgically recall this action, which in fact did not take place,” the artist writes in “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, told by himself.” - Approx. ed.). On the clock on the left, the only one that has retained its hardness, the ants also create a clear cyclic structure, obeying the divisions of the chronometer. However, this does not obscure the meaning that the presence of ants is still a sign of decay.” According to Dali, linear time devours itself.
(5) Fly. According to Nina Getashvili, “the artist called them fairies of the Mediterranean. In The Diary of a Genius, Dali wrote: "They carried inspiration to the Greek philosophers who spent their lives under the sun, covered in flies."
(6) Oliva. For the artist, this is a symbol of ancient wisdom, which, unfortunately, has already sunk into oblivion (therefore, the tree is depicted dry).
(7) Cape Creus. This cape on the Catalan coast of the Mediterranean Sea, near the city of Figueres, where Dali was born. The artist often depicted him in paintings. “Here,” he wrote, “the most important principle of my theory of paranoid metamorphoses is embodied in rocky granite ( the flow of one delusional image into another. - Approx. ed.)... These are frozen clouds reared up by an explosion in all their countless incarnations, all new and new - you just need to slightly change the angle of view.
(8) Sea for Dali it symbolized immortality and eternity. The artist considered it an ideal space for traveling, where time does not flow at an objective speed, but in accordance with the internal rhythms of the traveler's consciousness.
(9) Egg. According to Nina Getashvili, the World Egg in Dali's work symbolizes life. The artist borrowed his image from the Orphics - ancient Greek mystics. According to Orphic mythology, the first androgynous deity Phanes was born from the World Egg, who created people, and heaven and earth were formed from the two halves of its shell.
(10) Mirror lying horizontally to the left. It is a symbol of variability and inconstancy, obediently reflecting both the subjective and objective world.
Artist
Salvador Dali
The great Spanish artist Salvador Filipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech was born in the spring of 1904, on May 11th at 08:45...
Brief biographical note
1904 Salvador Dali Domanech was born on May 11th in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain.
1910 Dali begins attending Christian Brothers' Immaculate Conception elementary school.
1916 Summer vacation with the Pichot family. Dali encounters modern painting for the first time.
1917 Spanish artist Nunez teaches Dali the techniques of the original engraving.
1919 First exhibition in a group show at the municipal theater in Figueres. Dali is 15 years old.
1921 Death of mother.
1922 Dali passes the entrance exam to the Accademia de San Fernando in Madrid.
1923 Temporary expulsion from the Academy.
1925 First professional solo exhibition at the Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona.
1926 First trip to Paris and Brussels. Meeting with Picasso. Final expulsion from the Academy.
Leda Atomica 1949Dream inspired by the flight of a bee 1943
The Last Supper 1955
Temptation of Saint Anthony 1946
1929 Collaboration with Louis Buñuel in the production of the film "Andalusian dog". Meeting with Gala Eluard. First exhibition in Paris.
1930 Dalí resides with Gala in Port Ligat, Spain.
1931 Painting "The Persistence of Memory".
1934 Painting "The Riddle of William Tell" Dali quarreled with a group of surrealists. Civil marriage with Gala. Trip to New York. Albert Schira publishes 42 original Dalí engravings.
1936 Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Paintings "Autumn of Cannibalism", "Soft Hours", "Civil War Warning".
1938 Conversation with the sick Sigmund Freud in London. Dali takes part in the International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris.
1939 Definitively expelled from the Surrealist group due to Dalí's unwillingness to support their political motives.
1940 Dali and Gala emigrate to America where they live for eight years, first in Virginia, then in California and New York.
1941 Retrospective exhibition with Miro at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
1942 Publication of the autobiography "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, told by himself."
1946 Participation in the film project "Destino" by Walt Disney. Participation in the Alfred Hitchcock Film Project. Painting "The Temptation of St. Anthony".
1949 Paintings "Leda Atomica" and Madonna Port - Ligat "(version 1). Return to Europe.
1957 Publication of twelve original lithographs by Dalí, titled "Pages of the Quest for Don Quixote of La Mancha".
1958 Wedding of Gala and Dali in Girona, Spain.
1959 Painting "Discovery of America by Columbus".
1962 Dalí enters into a ten-year agreement with publisher Pierre Argille to publish illustrations./>
1965 Dali signs a contract with Sidney Lucas, New York.
1967 Acquisition of Pubol Castle in Girona and rebuilding.
1969 Ceremonial moving into Pubol Castle.
1971 The Salvador Dalí Museum opens in Cleveland, Ohio.
1974 Dali begins to worry about health problems.
1982 Opening of the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Death Gala at Pubol Castle.
1983 Grand exhibition of Dali's works in Spain, in Madrid and Barcelona. Completion of painting classes. The last painting is "Swallow's Tail".
1989 January 23, Dali died of heart failure. He is buried in the crypt of the Tatro Museum, in Figueres, Spain.
“The fact that I myself do not know anything about their meaning at the moment of drawing my pictures does not at all mean that these images are devoid of any meaning.” Salvador Dali
Salvador Dali "The Persistence of Memory" ("Soft Watch", "The Hardness of Memory", "The Persistence of Memory", "The Persistence of Memory")
Year of creation 1931 Oil on canvas, 24*33 cm The painting is in the Museum of Modern Art in the city of New York.
The work of the great Spaniard Salvador Dali, like his life, always arouses genuine interest. His paintings, largely incomprehensible, attract attention with originality and extravagance. Someone forever remains enchanted in search of "special meaning", and someone with undisguised disgust speaks of the artist's mental illness. But neither one nor the other can deny genius.
Now we are at the Museum of Modern Art in the city of New York in front of the great Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory". Let's take a look at it.
The plot of the picture takes place against the backdrop of a desert surreal landscape. In the distance we see the sea, in the upper right corner of the picture bordering on the golden mountains. The main attention of the viewer is riveted to a bluish pocket watch, which slowly melts in the sun. Some of them flow down over a strange creature that lies on the lifeless earth in the center of the composition. In this creature, one can recognize a shapeless human figure, shivering with closed eyes and protruding tongue. In the left corner of the picture in the foreground is a table. Two more clocks lie on this table - one of them flows down from the edge of the table, the other, rusty orange, retaining its original shape, is covered with ants. On the far edge of the table rises a dry broken tree, from the branch of which the last bluish clock flows.
Yes, Dali's paintings are an attack on a normal psyche. What is the history of the painting? The work was created in 1931. The legend says that, while waiting for Gala, the artist's wife, to return home, Dali painted a picture with a deserted beach and rocks, and the image of softening time was born to him at the sight of a piece of Camembert cheese. The color of the bluish clock was allegedly chosen by the artist, as follows. On the facade of the house in Port Ligat, where Dali lived, there is a broken sundial. They are still pale blue, although the paint is gradually fading - exactly the same color as in the painting "The Persistence of Memory".
The painting was first exhibited in Paris, at the Pierre Collet Gallery, in 1931, where it was purchased for $250. In 1933, the painting was sold to Stanley Resor, who in 1934 donated the work to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Let's try to figure out, as far as possible, whether there is some hidden meaning in this work. It is not known what looks like more confusion - the very plots of the paintings of the great Dali or attempts to interpret them. I propose to look at how different people interpreted the picture.
The outstanding art historian Federico Dzeri (F. Zeri) wrote in his research that Salvador Dali “in the language of allusions and symbols designated conscious and active memory in the form of a mechanical clock and ants scurrying about in them, and the unconscious in the form of a soft clock that shows an indefinite time. The Persistence of Memory thus depicts the fluctuations between ups and downs in the waking and sleeping states.
Edmund Swinglehurst (E. Swinglehurst) in the book “Salvador Dali. Exploring the irrational” also tries to analyze “The Persistence of Memory”: “Next to the soft clock, Dali depicted a hard pocket watch covered with ants, as a sign that time can move in different ways: either flow smoothly or be corroded by corruption, which, according to Dali , meant decay, symbolized here by the bustle of insatiable ants. According to Swingleharst, "The Persistence of Memory" has become a symbol of the modern concept of the relativity of time. Another researcher of the genius, Gilles Neret, in his book Dali, spoke very succinctly about the Persistence of Memory: “The famous “soft watch” is inspired by the image of Camembert cheese melting in the sun.”
However, it is known that almost every work of Salvador Dali has a pronounced sexual connotation. The famous 20th-century writer George Orwell wrote that Salvador Dali "is equipped with such a complete and excellent set of perversions that anyone can envy him." In this regard, interesting conclusions are drawn by our contemporary, an adherent of classical psychoanalysis, Igor Poperechny. Was it really only the "metaphor of the flexibility of time" that was put on public display? It is full of uncertainty and lack of intrigue, which is extremely unusual for Dali.
In his work “The Mind Games of Salvador Dali”, Igor Poperechny came to the conclusion that the “set of perversions” that Orwell spoke about is present in all the works of the great Spaniard. In the course of the analysis of the entire work of the Genius, certain groups of symbols were identified, which, with an appropriate arrangement in the picture, determine its semantic content. There are several such symbols in The Persistence of Memory. These are spreading watches and a face “flattened” with pleasure, ants and flies depicted on dials that show strictly 6 hours.
Analyzing each of the groups of symbols, their location in the paintings, taking into account the traditions of the meanings of the symbols, the researcher came to the conclusion that the secret of Salvador Dali lies in the denial of the death of the mother and the incestuous desire for her.
Being in an illusion artificially created by himself, Salvador Dali lived for 68 years after the death of his mother in anticipation of a miracle - her appearance in this world. One of the main ideas of numerous paintings of the genius was the idea of the mother being in a lethargic dream. A hint of lethargic sleep was the omnipresent ants, which in ancient Moroccan medicine fed people in this state. According to Igor Poperechny, in many canvases Dali depicts the mother with symbols: in the form of pets, birds, as well as mountains, rocks or stones. In the picture that we are now studying, at first you may not notice a small rock on which a shapeless creature is spreading, which is a kind of Dali's self-portrait ...
The soft clock in the picture shows the same time - 6 hours. Judging by the bright colors of the landscape, this is morning, because in Catalonia, Dali's homeland, night does not come at 6 o'clock. What worries a man at six in the morning? After what morning sensations did Dali wake up “completely broken”, as Dali himself mentioned in his book “The Diary of a Genius”? Why does a fly sit on a soft watch, in Dali's symbolism - a sign of vice and spiritual decay?
Based on all this, the researcher comes to the conclusion that the picture captures the time when Dali’s face experiences vicious pleasure, indulging in “moral decay”.
These are some points of view on the hidden meaning of the Dali painting. It remains for you to decide which of the interpretations you like best.
Salvador Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory" is perhaps the most famous of the artist's works. The softness of a hanging and flowing clock is one of the most unusual images ever used in painting. What did Dali mean by this? And did you really want to? We can only guess. One has only to recognize Dali's victory, won with the words: "Surrealism is me!"
This is where the tour comes to an end. Please ask questions.
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".
