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Early Life
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Salvador Dali was born May 11, 1904 in the small Spanish town
of Figueras. Salvador had an older brother that died none months
before he was born, also named Salvador. The second Salvador
was seen as the reincarnation as the first, and this is why
his parents chose to name him Salvador. Told this by his parents,
Dali admitted later in his life that "the ghostly memory
of this lost sibling" was to haunt him until he died
(Biography). His parents saw
Salvador as their second chance, and so he was spoiled growing
up.
When he was just ten years old, he began to paint, and around
thirteen years of age, he was painting with astounding talent.
Early in his life, his parents and also some friends of the
family, the Pichot, encouraged him. This family was full of
artistic people, but it was Pepito Pichot, the patriarch of
the family, that influenced Salvador most. At this point, his
parents also encouraged this interest in art by converting a
room in the house into a studio for Salvador to paint in. During
this period, Salvador was painting in an Impressionistic style.
Most of his works were of the landscapes around his province
of Catalunya. He started to have exhibitions of his work;
the first one was arranged by his father when Salvador was thirteen
years old.
After a few more shows, Salvador started studying under the
tutelage of Juan Nunez in 1918, at the age of fourteen. He experimented
with Impressionism and Pointillism. In 1921, the same year that
his mother died, Salvador entered the San Fernando Academy of
Fine Arts in Madrid, where he became part of the young Spanish
artistic elite. He started experimenting with Cubism while his
peers were still studying Impressionism, which he had already
mastered. Dali was seen as an odd personality around campus.
The San Fernando Academy suspended him in 1923 on charges of
inciting a riot against school officials. In 1924, he was imprisoned
for five weeks on charges of government subversion. He returned
to school in 1925, only to be expelled a year later because
he refused to take his final exams. Salvador’s father disowned
him because of his pattern of outrageous behavior. After serving
nine months in the military, Salvador traveled around Europe.
It is this period in his life that was the most influential
in his work.
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Surrealism
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Between 1928-1929, Salvador first read Sigmund Freud’s
The Interpretation of Dreams. His study of Freud’s theory
of the unconscious is what led him to become one of Surrealism’s
best painters. This is the style that he is best known for,
although he experimented with Impressionism, Pointillism, Cubism,
Futurism and Metaphysical painting. Miro introduced him to the
French Surrealists, led by Andre Breton. He was also introduced
to Gala Eluard, who was married at the time to the French poet
Paul Eluard. The two fell in love instantly; Gala became Salvador’s
friend, companion, manager, lover and muse. She was his only
female model and shows up in many of his pictures. They were
married in a civil ceremony in 1934.
In 1930, Salvador expounded his Paranoic Critical method of
thinking. This thinking process is the ability to simulate a
paranoid state and paint the images that are seen while in that
state. Dali called these "hand painted dream photographs."
These Surrealist paintings feature "wild juxtapositions
of animals, objects and biomorphic shapes, usually placed in
the harshly lit landscapes of his native Catalan" (Salvador
Dali Prints).
Between 1934-1937, he had a formal break with the Surrealist
group. The reasons given are many; according to Fine Art
Painting Gallery, his political views (including the support
of General Franco) and his desire to adopt a more traditional
style led to his expulsion. Art Cult says that his fascination
towards Hitler was responsible for the break. Salvador Dali
Prints says that it was Dali’s betrayal of his old friend
Luis Bunuel; in his autobiography, Dali described Bunuel as
an atheist and a communist, which resulted in Bunuel being fired
from his job at the Museum of Modern Art in New York
City. Whatever the reasons, Dali began to focus on more traditional
and universal themes.
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Post-Surrealism
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It is during this period that he also began to dabble in all
sorts of types of artistic expression, in addition to painting.
Between the late 1930s and the early 1980s, Dali wrote novels;
he designed sets, costumes and wrote plots for ballets and plays;
he designed jewelry; he collaborated on movies and cartoons;
he contributed to journals; he illustrated books; and he sculpted.
Dali also experimented with new types of visual art, like holograms
and stereoscopic installation pieces.
In 1964, Dali was awarded the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic,
one of Spain’s highest awards. After developing palsy in 1980
and suffering the death of his true love, Gala, in 1982, Dali
went into a deep depression and severely decreased his artistic
output. Spain’s king, Juan Carlos, gave him the title of Marques
de Dali de Pubol for his contribution to Spanish culture the
same year. In 1983, he painted his last picture, The Swallowtail,
and in 1985 Dali started designing a plaza for the city of Madrid.
The square was built in 1986, and consists of the one ton sculpture
Homage to Newton. For the next few years of his life,
Dali lived quietly in an apartment next to the Teatro Museo,
the museum that he opened in Figueras. After his death in 1989,
he was buried in a crypt in the Teatro Museo and his estate
was divided between the cities of Madrid and Figueras.
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Portraits
Although he is not known for his portraits, Salvador Dali
did produce a number of them. These portraits became more refined
as Dali’s style evolved. Early portraits were done in the Impressionistic
style that he was experimenting with. Many of these were of
the landscape, with Dali as the subject; Self-Portrait with
the Neck of Raphael (1920-1921), Self-Portrait in the
Studio, Cadaques (1919), and Self-Portrait (1921)
are included in this group. Portraits of other people from this
period include Portrait of Hortensia, Peasant Woman of Cadaques
(1918-1919) and Portrait of Lucia (1918). Lucia was
Dali’s nurse when he was a child, and he left a deep impression
on him. This was one of the first portraits he painted.
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In 1925, Dali painted a portrait of his father, Portrait of the Artist’s
Father.
This portrait clearly expresses the intimidating presence that the senior
Dali had.
This feeling is made obvious because of "the pose of the sitter,
the construction of the picture, the lighting,
and the neo-realistic technique inspired by Andre Derain" (Descharnes,
1985).
After meeting Paul and Gala Eluard in 1929, Dali’s surrealistic influences
can be seen in the portraits that he painted of them. In most of his
Surrealistic paintings, Dali included a lion’s head, a grasshopper and
a profile of himself, among other "general symbols derived from
psychiatric and psychoanalytical literature" (Verittas,
2002 & Schneede, 1973). These elements are visible in
Portrait of Paul Eluard (1929) and in untitled colorplates of
Gala done in the early 1930s. His Illuminated Pleasures (1929),
one of his most famous paintings, contains a horizontal self-portrait
done in profile, which is common in his paintings, especially the Surrealistic
ones. The Persistence of Memory (1931), with its melting clocks
(a Dali trademark), also has this horizontal self-portrait done in profile.
Other Surrealistic self-portraits can be seen in The Grand Masturbateur
(1929), and Sleep (1937), seen below:
The Grand Masturbateur |
Sleep |
| Dali often compared himself to Pablo Picasso because
of their common Surrealist background, and in Portrait of Picasso
(1947) he made a direct comparison through painting. Soft
Self-Portrait with Grilled Bacon (1941) has a very similar
composition as the Picasso portrait. Dali portrayed another contemporary
figure in Portrait of Mae West (1935), seen here: |
Portrait of Mae West |
Portrait of Gala |
Dali’s favorite subject to paint was
his muse and his wife, Gala. Portrait of Gala (1935), seen
left, is less enigmatic than much of his other work. In it, Dali
pays homage to Jean-Francois Millet’s The Angelus (1859)
by painting his own version of it. |
Gala is featured in more abstract paintings, as well. One
Second Before Awakening from a Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around
a Pomegranate (1944), shown below, features a nude Gala, as do others.
Galarina (1944-1945) is from Dali’s classical period. More abstract
paintings, shown below, are My Wife, Nude, Contemplating Her Own
Flesh Becoming Stairs, Three Vertebrate of a Column, Sky and Architecture
(1945), Galatea of the Spheres (1952). Gala Contemplating
the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of
Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko) (1977) is a dual portrait of
both Gala and Abraham Lincoln.
One Second Before Awakening from a Dream Caused
by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate
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My Wife, Nude, Contemplating Her Own Flesh
Becoming Stairs,
Three Vertebrate of a Column, Sky and Architecture
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Galatea of the Spheres
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Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters
Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko)
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Dali painted some portraits where he included both
Gala and himself. The Hallucinogenic Toreador(1968-1970) is done
in the more classical style that Dali painted in after Surrealism, contrasted
with the abstractness of Patient Lovers (1970), shown below.
Patient Lovers
(Apparition of a Stereoscopic Face in the Ampurdan Landscape)
As can be seen from the above portraits, Dali was
an accomplished artist and was able to paint in many styles. He experimented
with Impressionism, Cubism, Pointillism, Futurism, Metaphysical painting,
Photo Realism, Neo-Realism and Surrealism. Among his many accomplishments
and contributions to the art world is his Paranoic Critical method,
the stylized method of painting for which he became best known. In his
lifetime, he became the most influential Surrealist painter. He also
tried his hand at writing, illustrating, sculpture, cinema, theater
and jewelry design. Salvador Dali was a Renaissance man for the twentieth
century.
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