Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí de Púbol, known as Salvador Dalí, was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work.
Paintings by Salvador Dalí
The Persistence of Memory (1931)
The Persistence of Memory (Catalan: La persistència de la memòria, Spanish: La persistencia de la memoria) is a 1931 painting by artist Salvador Dalí and one of the most recognizable works of Surrealism. First exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932 and sold for $250, The Persistence of Memory was donated to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City two years later in 1934 by an anonymous donor, where it has remained ever since. It is widely recognized and frequently referred to in popular culture, and sometimes referred to by more descriptive titles, such as "The Melting Clocks", "The Soft Watches" or "The Melting Watches".
The well-known surrealist piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch. It epitomizes Dalí's theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time. As Dawn Adès wrote, "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order". This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether this was the case, Dalí replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting in the sun.
The Burning Giraffe (1937)
The Burning Giraffe is an oil painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí, from 1937. It is held in the Kunstmuseum Basel.
Dalí painted Burning Giraffe before his exile in the United States, which was from 1940 to 1948. Although Dalí declared himself apolitical—"I am Dalí, and only that"—this painting shows his personal struggle with the battle in his home country. Characteristic are the opened drawers in the blue female figure, which Dalí on a later date described as "Femme-coccyx" (tail bone woman). This phenomenon can be traced back to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical method, much admired by Dalí. He regarded him as an enormous step forward for civilization, as shown in the following quote: "The only difference between immortal Greece and our era is Sigmund Freud who discovered that the human body, which in Greek times was merely neoplatonical, is now filled with secret drawers only to be opened through psychoanalysis".
The Great Masturbator (1929)
The Great Masturbator (1929) is a painting by Salvador Dalí, painted during the surrealist movement. It is currently displayed at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
In the centre of the painting there is a distorted human face in profile looking downwards, based on the shape of a natural rock formation at Cap de Creus along the sea-shore of Catalonia. A similar profile is seen in Dalí's more famous painting from two years later, The Persistence of Memory. A nude female figure (resembling Dalí's then-new muse, Gala) rises from the back of the head; this may be the masturbatory fantasy suggested by the title. The woman's mouth is near a thinly clad male crotch, a suggestion that fellatio may take place. The male figure is seen only from the waist down and has bleeding fresh cuts on his knees. Below the head in the centre, on its mouth, is a grasshopper, an insect Dalí referred to several times in his writings. Unlike real grasshoppers, it seems to be gigantic and has four legs rather than six. A swarm of ants (a motif often used to represent sexual anxiety in Dalí's work) gather on the grasshopper's abdomen, as well as on the prone face. In the landscape below, three other figures are arranged, along with an egg (commonly used as a symbol of fertility) and a few other features. Two of the characters in the landscape are arranged in such a way as to cast a single long shadow, while the other character is seen hurriedly walking into the distance on the peripheries of the canvas. On the back of the central head-like figure, a formation of two rocks and a potted dry plant can be seen, the pot of the plant placed over the bottom rock while balancing the other rock on top of it in an unrealistic way. This part is thought to represent the idea of escape-from-reality found in many of Dalí's other works.
The Face of War (1940)
The Face of War (The Visage of War; in Spanish La Cara de la Guerra) is an oil painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí, from 1940. It was painted during a brief period when the artist lived in California. The painting is owned by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in Rotterdam
The trauma and the view of war had often served as inspiration for Dalí's work. He sometimes believed his artistic vision to be premonitions of war. This work was painted between the end of the Spanish Civil War [1936] and the beginning of the Second World War (1939).
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944)
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening is a surrealist painting by Salvador Dalí, from 1944. A shorter alternate title for the painting is Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee. The woman in the painting, dreaming, is believed to represent his wife, Gala, a regular presence in his work. The painting is held in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, in Madrid.
It is an oil painting on wood. In this "hand-painted dream photograph", as Dalí generally called his paintings, there is a seascape of distant horizons and calm waters, perhaps Portlligat, amidst which Gala is the subject of the scene. Next to the naked body of the sleeping woman, which levitates above a flat rock that floats above the sea, Dalí depicts two suspended droplets of water and a pomegranate, a Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection. Above the pomegranate flies a bee, an insect that traditionally symbolizes the Virgin.
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936)
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936) is a painting by the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. Dalí created the piece to represent the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, having painted it only six months before the conflict began. He subsequently claimed that he was aware the war was going to occur long before it began, and cited his work as evidence of "the prophetic power of his subconscious mind." However, some have speculated that Dalí may have changed the name of the painting after the war to emphasize his prophetic assertions, although it is not entirely certain.
The art historian Robert Hughes commented on Dalí's painting in his biography of Goya, stating: "Salvador Dalí appropriated the horizontal thigh of Goya's crouching Saturn for the hybrid monster in the painting Soft Construction with Boiled Beans, ... which—rather than Picasso's Guernica—is the finest single work of visual art inspired by the Spanish Civil War."
Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954)
Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) is a 1954 oil-on-canvas painting by Salvador Dalí. A nontraditional, surrealist portrayal of the Crucifixion, it depicts Christ on a polyhedron net of a tesseract (hypercube). It is one of his best-known paintings from the later period of his career. It is displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
During the 1940s and 1950s Dalí's interest in traditional surrealism diminished and he became fascinated with nuclear science, feeling that "thenceforth, the atom was [his] favorite food for thought". The atomic bombing at the end of World War II left a lasting impression; his 1951 essay "Mystical Manifesto" introduced an art theory he called "nuclear mysticism" that combined his interests in Catholicism, mathematics, science, and Catalan culture in an effort to reestablish classical values and techniques, which he extensively utilized in Corpus Hypercubus.
Lobster Telephone (1936)
Lobster Telephone (also known as Aphrodisiac Telephone) is a Surrealist object, created by Salvador Dalí in 1936 for the English poet Edward James (1907–1984), a leading collector of surrealist art. In his 1942 book The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, Dalí wrote teasingly of his demand to know why, when he asked for a grilled lobster in a restaurant, he was never presented with a boiled telephone.
The work is a composite of an ordinary working telephone and a lobster made of plaster. It is approximately 15 × 30 × 17 cm (6 × 12 × 6.6 inches) in size.
Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951)
Christ of Saint John of the Cross is a painting by Salvador Dalí made in 1951 which is in the collection of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow. It depicts Jesus Christ on the cross in a darkened sky floating over a body of water complete with a boat and fishermen. Although it is a depiction of the crucifixion, it is devoid of nails, blood, and a crown of thorns, because, according to Dalí, he was convinced by a dream that these features would mar his depiction of Christ. Also in a dream, the importance of depicting Christ in the extreme angle evident in the painting was revealed to him.
The painting is known as the Christ of Saint John of the Cross, because its design is based on a drawing by the 16th-century Spanish friar John of the Cross. The composition of Christ is also based on a triangle and circle (the triangle is formed by Christ's arms; the circle is formed by Christ's head). The triangle, since it has three sides, can be seen as a reference to the Trinity, and the circle may be an allusion to Platonic thought. The circle represents unity.
Leda Atomica (1949)
Leda Atomica is an oil painting by Salvador Dalí, from 1949. It is exhibited in the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres.
The picture depicts Leda, the mythological queen of Sparta, with the swan. Leda is a nude frontal portrait of Dalí's wife, Gala, who is seated on a pedestal with a swan suspended behind and to her left. Different objects such as a book, a set square, two stepping stools and an egg float around the main figure. In the background on both sides, the rocks of Cap Norfeu (on the Costa Brava in Catalonia, between Roses and Cadaqués) define the location of the scene.
The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955)
The Sacrament of the Last Supper is a painting by Salvador Dalí. Completed in 1955 after nine months of work, it remains one of his most popular compositions and is among the most-viewed works at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
The Sacrament of the Last Supper was completed during Dalí's post-World War II period, which is characterized by his increased interest in science, optical illusion and religion. During this time he became a devout Roman Catholic and simultaneously was astonished by the Atomic Age. Dalí himself labelled this era in his work "Nuclear Mysticism". He sought to combine traditional Christian iconography with images of disintegration. This is especially apparent in his piece The Madonna of Port Lligat, which was completed six years earlier.
The Temptation of St. Anthony (Dalí) (1946)
The Temptation of St. Anthony is a painting by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. Painted in 1946, it is a precursor to the body of Dalí's work commonly known as the "classical period" or the "Dalí Renaissance".
Dalí painted The Temptation of St. Anthony in 1946, in response to a contest held by the David L. Loew–Albert Lewin film production company for a painting of the temptation of Saint Anthony, to be used in the film The Private Affairs of Bel Ami. This was the only art contest in which Dalí participated, and the painting chosen for the film was Max Ernst's version of the temptation.