Birth Year : 1904
Death Year : 1989
Country : Spain
Salvador Dali was born in Figueras, Spain, the son of a notary whose
family came from Cadaques on the Costa Brava. The Dali family spent their
summers in Cadaques, and it is this landscape that appears over and over
in the artist's work, either as background or as an integral part of the
composition. Dali began his career as an enfant terrible in the schools
of Figueras and then went to the School of Fine Arts in Madrid where he
quickly learned the fundamentals of drawing. At this time, however, he
was more interested in studying Freud and art magazines that specialized
in Cubism, Futurism, and metaphysical art. In about 1928, he went to Paris,
attached himself with passionate conviction to the French Surrealists and
soon married Gala Eluard, former wife of the poet Paul Eluard, one of the
founders of the movement. However, as Dali became absorbed in the study
of Italian Renaissance painters, the French Surrealists rejected his style
as too academic in technique and, thus, he left France for New York.
Dali's work is distinguished by precise and finely executed draughtsmanship
of almost photographic exactitude. Paint is applied smoothly and evenly
in a varied and generally muted palette that occasionally breaks out into
glaring color. His subject matter is that of the Freudian dream world and
of metamorphosis of objects, people, and animals, arranged in unexpected
and often inexplicable combinations. A prodigious worker, Dali has produced
large quantities of paintings that include portraits, landscapes with figures,
figures seemingly superimposed on landscapes, and, more recently, religious
subjects. He has also done illustrations for books, lithographs and etchings,
and jewelry designs.
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Salvador
Dali
Persistence
of Memory, The
Salvador
Dali
Melancholy,
Atomic, Uranic Idyll
Salvador
Dali
Paysage
aux Papillons
Salvador
Dali
Archeological
Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus
Salvador
Dali
Figure
at a Window
More Salvador Dali Prints & Posters
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