SALVADOR DALI: ANOTHER GREAT ARTIST

ART HISTORY
SALVADOR DALI: ANOTHER GREAT ARTIST (1904-1989)

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis of Dalí de Púbol was born on May 11, 1904 in Figueres, Spain near the French border.  A painter, draughtsman, illustrator, sculptor, writer and film maker, Dali was one of the most prolific, flamboyant, and well known artists of the 20th century.

He was a student at the San Fernando Academy of fine Arts in Madrid but was expelled for encouraging students to rebel and for withdrawing from an exam because he said the teachers were not qualified to judge his work.

Dali quickly gained recognition in 1925 after a solo show in Barcelona, in 1928 when his works were shown at the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh, and in 1929 when he held his first solo show in Paris.  It was at this time that Dali joined the ranks of the surrealists and met his future wife, Gala Eluard.

“The Persistence of Memory” was painted in 1931 after seeing some Camembert cheese melting in the heat on a hot summer day. Later that night, he dreamt of clocks melting on a landscape.  The small work (24 cm x 33 cm) is one of the most famous of the surrealist paintings. During this time and inspired by Freud, Dali used his “paranoiac-critical method” to create his art.

Dali was greatly affected by the death of his wife Gala in 1982. After that time, he lost much of his passion for life, his health began to fail, and he painted very little.  On January 23, 1989, at the age of 84, Salvador Dali died from heart failure with respiratory complications. He is buried in his Theater Museum in Figueres.

SOURCE: ARTFIXX.COM