Salvador Dali

Dali, Salvador 

Born May 11, 1904, in Figueras, Catalonia. Spanish American painter.

Dalí studied at the San Fernando Academy of Arts in Madrid from 1921 to 1926. From 1929 he lived in Paris and in 1940 settled in the United States. He lives in the USA and Spain. In 1928, Dalí joined the surrealist movement. Executed with technical precision, Dali’s paintings (The Persistence of Memory, 1931, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Jirafa de fuego, 1935, Public Art Collection. Basel) are nightmarish phantasmagorias and delirious visions, where unnatural situations and deliberately absurd combinations of objects take on apparent reality and authenticity. Beginning in 1941, Dalí turned to religious paintings and landscapes, bringing highly original fantasy to classical themes and composition structure (The Last Supper, 1955, National Gallery of Art, Washington). Dali’s works are characterized by unnatural fantasies and speculation on the political, religious, and aesthetic interests of the bourgeois public.

REFERENCES

Morse, A. R. Dalí: A Study of His Life and Work. Greenwich, Conn. [1958].