Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí in 1939. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten.
Born	Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech (1904-05-11)May 11, 1904 Figueres, Spain
Died	January 23, 1989(1989-01-23) (aged 84) Figueres, Spain
Resting place	Dalí Theatre-Museum
Education	Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid
Known for	Painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, design, writing
Movement	Surrealism, Cubism, Dada
Spouse	Gala Éluard Dalí ​ ​ (m. 1932; died 1982)​
Website	www.salvador-dali.org
Signature

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí de Púbol (Figueres, May 11, 1904 – ibidem, January 23, 1989) was a 20th-century Spanish painter, sculptor, engraver, set designer and writer. He is considered one of the foremost representatives of surrealism.

Salvador Dalí is known for his striking and dreamlike surrealist images. His painterly skills are usually attributed to the influence of, and his admiration for, Renaissance art. He was also an expert draftsman. Dalí's artistic resources also extended to film, sculpture and photography, which led him to numerous collaborations with other audiovisual artists. He had the ability to refine a genuinely personal style, palpable at first contact, which was in reality highly eclectic and which "sucked" from the innovations of others. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Persistence of Memory (also known as The Soft Watches), painted in 1931.

As an extremely imaginative artist, he displayed a marked tendency toward narcissism and megalomania, the aim of which was to attract public attention. This behavior irritated those who appreciated his art and gave ammunition to his critics, who rejected his eccentric conduct as a publicity stunt that was occasionally more eye-catching than his artistic output. Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, his passion for luxury and his love of oriental fashion" to a self-proclaimed "Arab lineage", which he traced back to the times of Arab rule over the Iberian Peninsula.

… that you do not know the meaning of my art does not mean that it has none…

The only difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad.

— Salvador Dalí

Biography

Childhood

The Dalí family in 1910: from left, his aunt María Teresa, his parents, his aunt Catalina (his father's second wife), his sister Ana María and his grandmother Ana.

Salvador Dalí was born at 8:45 a.m. on May 11, 1904, at number 20 Monturiol Street in Figueres, Province of Girona, in the Catalan comarca of Empordà, near the border with France. Dalí's elder brother, also named Salvador (born October 12, 1901, and baptized Salvador Galo Anselmo), had died of an "infectious gastroenteritic catarrh" some nine months earlier (on August 1, 1903). This deeply marked the artist later on; he went through a personality crisis, believing that he was a copy of his dead brother. His father, Salvador Dalí i Cusí, was a middle-class lawyer and notary, of a strict character softened by his wife Felipa Domènech i Ferrés, who encouraged the young Salvador's artistic interests. When he was five years old, his parents took him to his brother's grave and told him that he was his reincarnation, an idea he came to believe. Of his brother, Dalí said:

... we resembled each other like two drops of water, but we gave off different reflections... My brother was probably a first vision of myself, but according to too absolute a conception.

Dalí also had a sister, Anna Maria Dalí, four years younger than he. In 1949 she published a book about her brother, titled Dalí as Seen by His Sister. In his childhood, Dalí struck up a friendship with future players of F.C. Barcelona, such as Emilio Sagi Liñán and Josep Samitier. During vacations, in flourishing Cadaqués, the trio spent a great deal of time playing soccer.

In 1916 he discovered contemporary painting during a family visit to Cadaqués, where he met the family of Ramon Pichot, a local artist who traveled regularly to Paris, the art capital of the time. Following Pichot's advice, his father sent him to painting lessons with the master Juan Núñez. The following year, his father organized an exhibition of his charcoal drawings in the family home. In 1919, at the age of fourteen, Dalí took part in a group exhibition of local artists at the municipal theater of Figueres and in another in Barcelona, sponsored by the University, at which he received the University Rector's prize.

In 1919, while in the sixth year of secondary school at the Ramón Muntaner Institute, he and several friends published the monthly magazine Studium. This publication included illustrations, poetic texts and a series of articles on painters such as Goya, Velázquez and Leonardo da Vinci.

In February 1921 his mother died of uterine cancer. Dalí was 16 years old. He would later say of his mother's death that it was "the hardest blow I have received in my life. I adored her. I could not resign myself to the loss of the being on whom I counted to make the inevitable stains of my soul invisible...". After her death, Dalí's father married his late wife's sister. Dalí never approved of this.

Ancestors of Salvador Dalí

Generation	Ancestors
1	Salvador Dalí i Domènech
2 (parents)	Father: Salvador Dalí i Cusí Mother: Felipa Domènech i Ferrés
3 (paternal grandparents)	Gal Dalí i Viñas Teresa Cusí i Marcó
3 (maternal grandparents)	Anselm Domènech i Serra María Anna Ferrés i Sadurní

Youth in Madrid and Paris

Dalí had two possible influences for the mustache he wore: on the left, Josep Margarit, a Catalan military man whose portrait hung in the living room of the artist's family home; on the right, Diego Velázquez, the Andalusian master painter admired by the Catalan genius.

In 1922 Dalí took up residence at the celebrated Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid to begin his studies at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Dalí immediately attracted attention for his character as an eccentric dandy. He wore long hair with sideburns, a raincoat, stockings and gaiters in the style of Victorian artists. However, it was his paintings, in which Dalí was experimenting with cubism, that caught the attention of his fellow residents and students, who included future figures of Spanish art such as Maruja Mallo, Federico García Lorca and Luis Buñuel. At that time, however, Dalí may not have fully understood cubist principles: his only sources were articles published in the press and a catalog Pichot had given him, since there were no cubist painters in the Madrid of that time.

On May 21, 1924, Salvador Dalí was arrested during the visit of Alfonso XIII to Figueres. He was imprisoned for twelve days in the prison of Girona (probably also in Figueres), with the reason for his arrest omitted from his record. Some sources point to this as a reprisal for his father's anti-monarchist statements. That same year, a still unknown Salvador Dalí illustrated a book for the first time. It was an edition of the Catalan poem Les Bruixes de Llers, by one of his friends from the residence, the poet Carles Fages de Climent. Dalí soon became familiar with Dada, an influence that marked him for the rest of his life. At the residence he also formed a passionate relationship with the young Lorca, but Dalí ended up rejecting the poet's amorous advances.

Postcard from Federico García Lorca and Salvador Dali to Antonio de Luna García

Dalí was expelled from the Academy in 1926, shortly before his final examinations, for stating that there was no one there qualified to examine him. The mastery of his painterly resources is reflected in his impeccably realistic Basket of Bread, painted in 1926. That same year, he visited Paris for the first time, where he met Pablo Picasso, whom the young Dalí would deeply admire. Picasso had already received some praising comments about Dalí from Joan Miró. With the passage of time and the development of his own style, Dalí in turn became a reference point and an influential factor in their painting.

Some of the characteristics of Dalí's painting of that period became distinctive of all his later work. Dalí absorbed the influences of many artistic styles, from classical academicism to the most groundbreaking avant-gardes. His classical influences included Raphael, Bronzino, Zurbarán, Vermeer and, of course, Velázquez. He alternated traditional techniques with contemporary systems, sometimes in the same work. The exhibitions of his work held in Barcelona at that time attracted great attention, mixing praise with the debates stirred up by divided critics.

At that time, Dalí grew a showy mustache imitating that of the celebrated painter Diego Velázquez, which would become one of his personal trademarks for the rest of his life.

From 1929 to the Second World War

The hallucinated gazes of Dalí (left) and his comrade in surrealism, Man Ray, in Paris, on June 16, 1934, in a photograph by Carl Van Vechten.

In 1929 Dalí collaborated with the film director Luis Buñuel, a friend from the student residence, on the writing of the controversial short film Un chien andalou, which showed scenes typical of the surrealist imagination. Dalí claimed to have played an essential role in the shooting of the film, though this has not been confirmed by the historiography of contemporary art. In August of that same year he met his muse and future wife Gala. Born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, she was a Russian immigrant, eleven years older than he, at that time married to the French poet Paul Éluard. That same year, Dalí continued to exhibit regularly, now as a professional, and officially joined the surrealist group based in the Parisian district of Montparnasse. Over the following two years, his work enormously influenced the course of surrealism, which acclaimed him as the creator of the paranoiac-critical method, which, it was said, helped to access the unconscious, releasing creative artistic energies.

At twenty-seven, newly arrived in Paris, I made, in collaboration with Buñuel, two films that have gone down in history: Un Chien Andalou and L'Âge d'Or. Afterward, Buñuel worked alone and directed two other films, thereby doing me the inestimable service of revealing to the public to whom the genius aspect, and to whom the primitive aspect, of Un Chien Andalou and L'Âge d'Or were owed. If I get to shoot my film, I want to make sure that it will be, from beginning to end, without interruption, a marvel, for it is not worth the trouble of going to see spectacles that are not sensational. The larger my audience, the more money the film will bring its author, so justly christened Avida Dollars.

— Salvador Dalí, June 1953

On the domestic front, Dalí's relationship with his father was close to breaking point. Salvador Dalí i Cusí opposed the young artist's romance with Gala, and condemned his association with the surrealist artists, considering them—like much of public opinion at the time—elements tending toward moral degeneracy. The tension kept rising until it culminated in a personal confrontation, triggered by a news item about Dalí published in the press, which reported that a drawing of a Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ exhibited in Paris by the young man bore an inscription reading: "Sometimes, I spit on my mother's portrait for fun". Outraged, his father demanded public satisfaction. Dalí refused, perhaps for fear of being expelled from the surrealist group, and was violently thrown out of the house on December 28, 1929. His father disinherited him and forbade him ever to return to Cadaqués. Later, Dalí described how, in the course of this episode, he presented his father with a used condom containing his own semen, with the words: "Take this. Now I owe you nothing!". The following summer, Dalí and Gala rented a small fisherman's hut in a bay near Portlligat. He bought the land, and over the years kept enlarging it until it became his sumptuous seaside villa, today converted into a house-museum. Gala and Dalí married in 1934 in a civil ceremony in Paris, and would marry again in the Catholic rite on August 8, 1958, at the Sanctuary of Els Àngels, Province of Girona, which they reached in a Cadillac, today on display at the Dalí Theatre-Museum.

Portrait of Salvador Dalí, Federico García Lorca (1927)

In 1931 Dalí painted one of his most celebrated works, The Persistence of Memory (The Soft Watches), a work in which, according to some theories, he illustrated his rejection of time as a rigid or deterministic entity. This idea is supported by other images in the work, such as the vast landscape, or some pocket watches devoured by insects. Insects, moreover, would form part of the Dalinian imagery as a natural destructive entity and, as he explained in his memoirs, this stemmed from a childhood memory.

Dalí arrived in the United States thanks to the art dealer Julien Levy in 1934. The exhibition of some of Dalí's works—including the celebrated Persistence...—caused an enormous stir in New York. A ball was organized in his honor, the Dalí Ball, to which he appeared wearing a glass case hung over his chest with a brassiere inside. That same year, Dalí and Gala held a masquerade ball in New York, courtesy of the heiress Caresse Crosby. They were dressed as the Lindbergh baby and his kidnapper, in allusion to a dramatic recent event. The scandal raised in the press was so great that Dalí publicly apologized. On returning to Paris, he had to explain himself to the surrealists, who did not understand why he had apologized for an act considered surrealist.

Although most of surrealism had subscribed to left-wing political ideas, Dalí maintained a position that was judged ambiguous on the question of the relationship between art and political activism. The leaders of the movement, chiefly André Breton, accused him of defending the "new" and "irrational" aspects of the Hitlerian phenomenon, an accusation Dalí refuted by stating that "I am not a Hitlerian either in fact or in intention". Dalí insisted that surrealism could exist in an apolitical context, and refused to publicly denounce the German fascist regime. This and other factors made him lose his standing among his fellow artists, and at the end of 1934 Dalí was subjected to a "surrealist trial", which resulted in his expulsion from the movement. To this, Dalí responded with his celebrated retort, "I am surrealism".

However, in 1936, Dalí again took part in a surrealist exhibition, this time international in scope, held in London. His lecture, titled Fantômes paranoiques authentiques, was delivered in a diving suit, helmet included. He arrived at the lecture with a billiard cue and a pair of Russian hounds, and in the course of it he had to remove the helmet in order to breathe. He commented on this that "I simply wanted to show that I was diving deeply into the human mind".

At that time, Dalí's patron was the very wealthy Edward James, who had contributed generously to the artist's rise by buying numerous works from him and lending him money for two years. They became good friends, so much so that James appears in Dalí's painting Swans Reflecting Elephants. They also collaborated in the creation of two of the most representative icons of the movement: the Lobster Telephone and the Mae West lips sofa. In 1939 Breton coined the derogatory anagram "Avida Dollars" to criticize his passion for money. This sarcastic reference to his thriving art business also sought to accuse him of cultivating megalomania through fame and money. Some of the surrealists even began to speak of Dalí in the past tense, as if he had already died. Some surrealist groups, and later members such as Ted Joans, kept up a bitter controversy against Dalí that lasted until the day of his death (and even beyond).

Stay in New York

In 1940, with the Second World War devastating Europe, Dalí and Gala fled to the United States, where they lived for eight years. After the move, Dalí returned to his former Catholicism. "During that period", report Robert and Nicholas Descharnes, "Dalí never stopped writing".

In 1941 Dalí delivered a screenplay to Jean Gabin, titled Moontide. In 1942 he published his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. He wrote regularly for the catalogs of his exhibitions, such as the one organized at the Knoedler Gallery in New York in 1943. In that article he stated that

surrealism will at least have served to give experimental proof that the total sterility of attempts at automatization have gone too far and have led to a totalitarian system... Contemporary laziness, and the total lack of technique, have reached their paroxysm in the psychological significance of the current use of the university institution.

He also wrote a novel, titled Hidden Faces and published in 1944, about a fashion salon for automobiles. From this arose a caricature by Erdwin Cox, of The Miami Herald, showing Dalí wearing an automobile as a party dress.

Exhibition on Dalí in London. In the foreground is a sculpture of a long-legged elephant with a pyramid on its back, identical to one of those that appear in the painting. In the background is the London Eye.

He accepted the decoration of a display window of the Bonwit-Tellerle department store on Fifth Avenue in New York. He made a controversial composition dedicated to day and night: on one side a mannequin with a red wig in a bathtub lined with astrakhan; on the other, a figure lying on a bed with a black canopy, on whose pillow coals were burning. But modifications were made without the author's permission, and Dalí, in protest, ended up throwing the bathtub through the glass of the display window. He was arrested and had to pay for the damage. The court acquitted him, as he argued that he was defending his work. This protest was understood as a defense of copyright.

In those years, Dalí designed illustrations for English-translated editions of classics such as Don Quixote, the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. He also contributed sets for Alfred Hitchcock's film Spellbound (known as Recuerda in Spain and Cuéntame tu vida in Argentina), and undertook with Walt Disney the making of an animated film, Destino, which remained unfinished and was assembled in 2003, long after the death of both men.

It was one of the most fruitful periods of his life, but also one disputed by certain critics, who felt that Dalí blurred the boundary between art and consumer goods by setting painting aside to devote himself more to design and commercial articles.

Dalí's public image accumulated all kinds of rumors about his extravagances and obsessions. An Italian friar named Gabriele Maria Berardi announced that he had performed an exorcism on Dalí during a visit by the latter to France in 1947. In 2005, a sculpture of Christ on the Cross was unveiled in the friar's town. It has been said that Dalí gave this work to the friar as a token of gratitude, and two Spanish experts on Dalí have considered that there are sufficient grounds to believe that the work was really his.

Final years in Catalonia

From 1948 Dalí lived in Catalonia. The fact that he chose Spain as his home in the time of the dictatorship made him the target of new criticism from some of his former colleagues, as well as from progressive circles. This suggests that the discredit with which Dalí was regarded among surrealists and art critics was due, at least in part, to political motivations rather than to the intrinsic value of his works of art. In 1959 Breton organized a retrospective exhibition titled Homage to Surrealism, which brought together works produced over the four decades of the movement. The exhibition featured pieces by Dalí, Joan Miró, Enrique Tábara and Eugenio Granell. The following year, however, Breton strongly opposed the inclusion of Dalí's Sistine Madonna in the International Surrealist Exhibition in New York.

Salvador Dali, The Rainbow (1972), M. T. Abraham Center for the Visual Arts.

At the end of his career, Dalí did not limit himself to painting, developing new experimental processes and media: he created a bulletin and became one of the pioneers of artistic holography, something not at all strange considering his long artistic exploration of visual games. During his final years, artists such as Andy Warhol proclaimed the Catalan one of the most notable influences on pop art. Dalí had also always shown a marked interest in the natural sciences and mathematics. This can be seen in many of his works—above all those created in the 1950s—in which he even composed individual portraits out of rhinoceros horns. According to the artist, the rhinoceros horn signified divine geometry, since it grows in a logarithmic spiral progression. He also related the concept to the themes of the chastity and holiness of the Virgin Mary. Others of Dalí's interests were DNA and the hypercube (a four-dimensional cube), which he even depicted unfolded in his Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus).

The bay of Portlligat, the landscape that captivated the artist in Cadaqués, with his house, today the House-Museum. It consists of a group of fishermen's huts acquired by the painter and his wife, Gala. Opened to the public in 1997, it displays mementos of the painter, his studio, the library, his rooms and the garden.

The postwar period opened a new artistic stage for Dalí, characterized by technical virtuosity and the use of optical illusions, as well as by the imagery of science and religion. His approach to Catholicism became increasingly marked, influenced perhaps by the shock caused by the Hiroshima bomb and the dawn of the nuclear age. Dalí himself called this stage of his art the nuclear-mystical period. His intention seemed to be the synthesis of Christian iconography with images of decomposition related to nuclear physics, as can be seen in works such as Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus). The classification of "nuclear mysticism" also includes La gare de Perpignan (1965) and The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968–1970). In 1960 Dalí began work on a personal theater and museum, built in the building of the old Municipal Theater, a 19th-century structure destroyed at the end of the Civil War; it was the largest of his individual projects, and he would devote a good part of his energies to it until 1974. Even later, in the mid-1980s, he carried out some minor alterations to the building.

Salvador Dalí in 1972.

In his maturity, the artist also became involved in other "extra-artistic" activities that gave a measure of his enormous popularity as a public figure. In 1968 Dalí recorded a television commercial for the Lanvin chocolate brand, and in 1969 he designed the Chupa Chups logo. That same year he worked as creative director of the advertising campaign for Eurovision, and created a large metal sculpture that was installed on the stage of the Teatro Real in Madrid. In 1971 Dalí inaugurated Sala Gaudí Barcelona, the first and largest art gallery in Spain, together with other personalities such as Gabriel García Márquez.

In the program Dirty Dali: A Private View, broadcast by Channel 4 in 2007, the critic Brian Sewell described how at the end of the 1960s he was asked by the artist to pose without trousers in a fetal position under the armpit of a figure of Jesus Christ, while Dalí photographed him and pretended to fumble inside his own trousers.

In 1980 Dalí's health deteriorated seriously. With his wife, Gala—who was already showing symptoms of senility—he allegedly consumed a cocktail of drugs that seriously damaged his nervous system, with the consequence of practically incapacitating him for artistic creation. At 76, Dalí's condition was pitiful, and his hand suffered constant tremors that showed the progress of Parkinson's disease. Until 1980 he was treated by the psychiatrist and professor Joan Obiols i Vié, a physician with extensive connections in the art world.

In 1982 King Juan Carlos I granted Dalí the title of Marquess of Dalí de Púbol, for which the artist thanked him with a drawing, titled Head of Europe, which ultimately turned out to be his last drawing, and which he gave him after the royal visit to his deathbed.

The Church of Sant Pere in Figueres, where Dalí received baptism and his First Communion, and where his funeral was held.

Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres. When the mayor invited the artist to donate a painting to the local museum, Dalí replied that he was willing to donate an entire museum and suggested the then-abandoned theater as its site. In this theater he had exhibited his first two works in 1918.

Gala died on June 10, 1982. After her death, Dalí lost his enthusiasm for living. He deliberately dehydrated himself severely—allegedly as a result of a suicide attempt—although he justified his action as a method of entering a state of suspended animation, in the same way that some bacteria can. He moved from Figueres to Púbol Castle, which he had bought for Gala and where she had died. In 1984 a fire of unknown causes broke out in his bedroom. Once again a suicide attempt was suspected, although it may have been due to negligence by the household staff. In any case, Dalí was rescued and returned to his home in Figueres, where a group of artists, patrons and fellow artists took charge of his well-being until his final years.

In the 1980s, his artist friend Wolf Vostell, whom Dalí had already met in 1978, proposed a joint project. This was carried out as one of Dalí's last projects in 1988, shortly before his death. Vostell realized a work by Dalí that Dalí had already conceived in the 1920s. El fin de Parzival consists of 20 motorcycles of the Guardia Civil from the era of the Francoist regime, five of which are mounted one on top of the other and accompanied by music from Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal. Originally, Dalí had intended to use bicycles. This addition was made by Vostell in agreement with Dalí, and the work is in the Museo Vostell Malpartida. In exchange, Wolf Vostell made the sculpture TV-Obelisk (1979) at the Teatre-Museu in Figueres in 1988, with 14 television sets, and Dalí completed the sculpture with a woman's head on top, which he had created. Inside the woman's head there is a video camera that records images of the sky, which are transmitted to the television sets.

It has been alleged that Dalí was forced by some of his "caretakers" to sign blank canvases that would be sold after his death as originals. These rumors made the art market skeptical of works attributed to Dalí from his final period.

In November 1988 Dalí was hospitalized following serious heart failure, and on December 5, 1988, he was visited by King Juan Carlos I, who confessed to him that he had always been a loyal admirer of his work.

Death

On January 23, 1989, while listening to his favorite record—Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde—he died of cardiorespiratory arrest in Figueres, aged 84, and, closing the circle, he was buried in the crypt in Figueres, located in his theater-museum (see image). His crypt lies across from the Church of Sant Pere (where he had been baptized and had received his First Communion) and a few meters from the house where he was born.

In accordance with his last wish, expressed on December 1, 1988, to the then mayor of Figueres, Marià Lorca, he was buried embalmed and with his face covered by a veil beneath the dome of his museum in Figueres, and not beside Gala in Púbol, as he had requested on some earlier occasion. Also, and contrary to what had been thought, it became known on his death that in 1982 he had made a will in favor of the Spanish State as "universal and free heir of all his property, rights and artistic creations". Shortly before the signing of that will, the State had bought two works from Dalí worth one hundred million and had taken charge of repatriating his works deposited in Paris and New York, in addition to granting him the title of Marquess of Dalí de Púbol. By contrast, his relations with the culture minister of the Generalitat, Max Cahner, were tense. When that last will was made public, Jordi Pujol, president of the Generalitat, who had expected to receive half of the legacy, declared that he felt deceived and Cahner accused Dalí of cowardice, but in the end an agreement was reached between the State and the Generalitat to divide the Dalinian legacy. Even so, Dalí, who has streets and squares dedicated to him in many cities of Spain, has none in Barcelona.

In the early hours of July 20, 2017, his body was exhumed in order to obtain DNA samples by order of Court of First Instance number 11 of Madrid, in connection with an unfounded paternity suit. His embalmer, Narcís Bardalet, present at the exhumation, stated that on removing the silk handkerchief covering his face he could see "how his mustache remained intact, pointing at ten past ten, as he wanted".

The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation is currently in charge of managing his legacy. In the United States, the party legally responsible for representing him is the Artists Rights Society. In 2002 this society required Google to withdraw a logo of the company designed in the likeness of Dalí's work, which had been specially created to commemorate the anniversary of his birth, citing copyright. Google agreed to withdraw the logo—whose use was, in theory, for a single day—but refused to admit infringement of his copyright.

Symbolism

Dalí described an extensive and personal symbolic universe throughout his work. The "soft watches", which had appeared in 1931, were interpreted as a reference to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, and were supposedly created after observing some pieces of Camembert left out in the sun on a hot August day, in addition to the fact that they always show six o'clock, the hour of surrealism. Another of his recurring symbols is the elephant, which first appeared in Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944). Dalí's elephants, inspired by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's obelisk in the Piazza della Minerva in Rome, usually appear with "long legs, almost invisible with desire", and carrying obelisks on their backs. Combined with those delicate limbs, the obelisks—in which some have wished to see a phallic symbol—create a sense of ghostly unreality. "The elephant is a distortion in space", Dalí explained in Dawn Ades's Dalí and Surrealism, "with its spindly legs contrasting the idea of weightlessness, defined without the slightest aesthetic concern, I am creating something that inspires in me a deep emotion and with which I try to paint honestly".

Another of his recurring symbols is the egg. It links to the concepts of prenatal intrauterine life, and is sometimes taken as a symbol of hope and love; and this is how it is interpreted in his Metamorphosis of Narcissus. He also resorted to images of fauna throughout his entire work: ants as a symbol of death, decay and intense sexual desire; the snail as a human head (he had seen a snail on a bicycle in the garden of Sigmund Freud when he went to visit him); and lobsters as a symbol of decadence and terror.

Other artistic activities

Dalí Atomicus, a 1948 photograph by Philippe Halsman, which explores the idea of suspension, depicting three flying cats, a thrown bucket of water and Salvador Dalí in midair.

File:DaliMuseum1.jpg

Central courtyard of the Dalí Museum in Figueres.

Dalí's artistic activity was not limited to painting. Some of his most popular works are sculptures or readymades, and he also stood out for his contributions to theater, fashion and photography, among other artistic disciplines. Two of Dalí's most notable surrealist objects were the Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa (made between 1936 and 1937). The artist and patron Edward James commissioned these pieces from Dalí. At the age of five, James had inherited a large estate at West Dean (Sussex, England), from where he encouraged surrealist production throughout the 1930s. "Lobsters and telephones have clear sexual connotations for Dalí", states the explanatory plaque of the Lobster Telephone on display at the Tate Gallery, "and from this he drew an analogy between food and sexuality". This telephone was fully functional, and James acquired four of them to replace those he had in his English retreat. One of them is currently in the aforementioned gallery, the second is in the telephone museum in Frankfurt, the third is owned by the Edward James Foundation and the fourth belongs to the National Gallery of Australia.

The Mae West Sofa, made of wood and satin, took its shape from the lips of the celebrated actress, whom Dalí found fascinating. Mae West had already appeared in a 1935 work titled Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as a Surrealist Apartment. The sofa is currently in the Brighton and Hove Museum, in England.

Between 1941 and 1970 Dalí devoted himself to jewelry design, producing 39 pieces in total. The jewels created, of intricate design, incorporated moving parts. The best known of them, The Royal Heart, is made of gold and set with 46 rubies, 42 diamonds and 4 emeralds, and is made so that the center "beats" like a real heart. Dalí himself commented in 1949 that "without an audience, without the presence of spectators, these jewels could not fulfill the function for which they were created. The viewer is, ultimately, the definitive creator". The Dalí-Joies (Dalí Jewels) are currently in the theater-museum in Figueres, as an integral part of its permanent collection.

Dalí also collaborated in theatrical creation. In 1927 he designed the sets for Lorca's play Mariana Pineda. For Bacchanale, a 1939 ballet based on Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser (1845), Dalí was in charge of the stage design and the editing of the libretto. In 1941 Dalí agreed to design the sets for Labyrinth, and again in 1949 for The Three-Cornered Hat.

A curiosity of Dalí's work is his foray into the Falles of Valencia with the design of a falla. It was the one set up by the El Foc commission in 1954, whose motto was The Surrealist Bullfight. Built by the sculptor Octavio Vicent with no small number of technical problems, it was heavily criticized by the falla community for the aesthetic and conceptual rupture it represented.

Although known mainly for his paintings, Dalí also showed an early interest in film during his youth, and regularly went to the cinema every Sunday. He had known silent film, in which the appearance of the medium took precedence over its content, and which granted its stars great popularity. He held that there were two dimensions to theories of film: "things in themselves", that is, the facts presented in the world of the camera, and "photographic imagination", or the way in which the camera shows the image and the creative value that can be derived from it. Dalí was particularly active on both sides of the camera. He created splendid works of art such as Destino (in collaboration with Walt Disney), a film begun in 1946 and completed in 2003 by Baker Bloodworth and Roy Oliver Disney. This work includes dreamlike images, such as strange flying figures, and is inspired by the song Destino (by the Mexican lyricist Armando Domínguez). However, when Disney hired Dalí, his company was not prepared to take on the work the artist was going to develop. After eight months of intense work, the company had to abandon the project due to budgetary difficulties, and only 57 years later was its production completed. Shown at various film festivals, the film combines the Dalinian artistic spirit with classic Disney animation.

Dalí worked as co-writer of Luis Buñuel's surrealist film Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog), a 17-minute short that includes some of the most memorable images of surrealism (such as the eye slit with a razor, although that image is more Buñuel's work than Dalí's). This film is his most notable contribution to the world of independent cinema. Un chien andalou was the way in which Dalí managed to bring his dreamlike images into a real dimension. The succession of scenes provokes a torrent of sensations in the viewer, as the expectations raised by the film are continually frustrated by others. The second film he produced with Buñuel was L'Âge d'Or (The Golden Age), shot at Studio 28 in Paris in 1930. This film was "banned for years by fascist and anti-Semitic groups that carried out a strong campaign of discredit in the press against the Parisian cinema where it was shown". In any case, those two films had an extraordinary impact on the surrealist film movement: "If Un chien andalou remains the supreme document of the surrealist cinematic adventure into the domains of the unconscious, L'age d'or is perhaps the most implacable manifestation of its revolutionary intent".

Dalí collaborated with renowned filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock. The best known of his film projects is probably the dream sequence in Spellbound (1945), which sought to show aspects of the unconscious. Hitchcock, interested in giving this scene a dreamlike quality, wanted to show in his film how the repression of experiences could lead to neurosis. Familiar with Dalí's work, he thought that Dalí's creative spirit could enhance the atmosphere he was looking for in his film. Dalí, for his part, would also work on a documentary titled Chaos and Creation, which contains numerous artistic references that attempt to explain the concept of art advocated by Dalí. The last film on which Dalí collaborated was Impressions of Upper Mongolia (1975), in which he narrated the adventure of an expedition searching for a gigantic hallucinogenic mushroom. The film's imagery revolves around microscopic urine stains on the band of a ballpoint pen on which Dalí urinated for several weeks.

The world of fashion and photography was not free of his artistic influence either. Dalí collaborated with Elsa Schiaparelli in making a white dress printed with a lobster. Other Dalí designs are a shoe-shaped hat and a pink belt with lips on the buckle. In 1950 he designed a "dress for the year 2045" in collaboration with Christian Dior. He also created his own textile designs and perfume bottles. His contribution to the world of photography is amply reflected in his collaborations with Man Ray, Brassaï, Cecil Beaton and Philippe Halsman. With Man Ray and Brassaï he made photographs of nature; with the others he entered a world of dark themes, such as the series Dalí Atomicus (1948), which was inspired by his work Leda Atomica. One of the photographs shows "a painter's easel, three cats, a bucket of water, and Dalí himself floating in the air".

References to Dalí in the context of science are understood in terms of the general fascination provoked by the new scientific paradigm that emerged from 20th-century quantum mechanics. Inspired by Werner Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle", Dalí wrote an Anti-Matter Manifesto in 1958: "In the surrealist period, I wanted to create the iconography of the inner world and the marvelous of my father Freud. Today, the outer world and that of physics has transcended that of psychology. My father, today, is Doctor Heisenberg".

In this sense, The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, from 1954, represents a twist on the work made in 1931, and symbolizes Dalí's conceptual leap from his ascientific and psychological perspective to the new postwar atomist approach.

His vision of architecture is reflected in the construction of his house in Portlligat, near Cadaqués, as well as in the surrealist pavilion—called Dream of Venus—that was exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and which contained numerous strange sculptures. As for his literary output, Dalí wrote his autobiography (The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, 1942), a book of diaries (Diary of a Genius, 1952–1963), and several essays (Oui: The paranoid-critical revolution, 1927–1933; The Tragic Myth of Millet's "Angelus", 1978), among other works. Literary publishing, and especially his interest in the graphic arts, led him to produce numerous engravings and lithographs. Although in his first period his graphic work matched his pictorial work in quality, over the years Dalí devoted himself to selling the rights to his images without personally bothering with their printing. In addition, a good number of forgeries were produced in the 1980s and 1990s, further confusing the already unreliable market for Dalí's graphic work.

Just as his much-admired colleague Marcel Duchamp had done, one of Dalí's most notable works turned out to be a person. In 1965 Dalí met the fashion model Amanda Lear, known professionally as Peki d'Oslo, in a French club. Lear became his protégée and his muse, and described their relationship in the biography My Life with Dalí (1986). Impressed by her mannish appearance, Dalí directed Lear's leap from the world of fashion to that of music, advising her on her public appearances and unleashing hazy legends about her origins, which immediately attracted the attention of the disco scene. According to Lear, she and Dalí entered into a "spiritual marriage" on the deserted summit of a mountain. Lear occupied the place that Dalí's previous muse, Isabelle Collin Dufresne (alias "Ultra Violet"), had left vacant after taking refuge in Andy Warhol's Factory.

Ideology and personality

Dalí in the 1960s, sporting the ostentatious mustache that characterized him, next to his pet, an ocelot named Babou.

Salvador Dalí's political ideas played a very significant role in his artistic beginnings. He was later accused of ideologically supporting Francoism. André Breton, the "father" of surrealism, distinguished himself by his efforts to separate Dalí's name from the surrealist group. However, that confrontation had more complex motives. In any case, Dalí was never anti-Semitic, as is evident from his friendly relationship with the famous architect and designer Paul László, who was Jewish. He expressed a deep admiration for Freud—whom he met personally—and for Albert Einstein, judging by his writings. On Dalí's personality, George Orwell said in an essay that

One ought to be able to hold in one's head simultaneously the ideas that Dalí was at the same time a good draftsman and a repugnant human being. The one does not invalidate, or indeed does not affect, the other.

In his youth the artist was associated with anarchism and communism. His writings often contain political statements—probably aimed more at impressing the public with their radicalism than based on any deep inspiration—that indicate a certain link with the political activism of Dada. As the years went by, his political allegiances changed, especially as surrealism became identified with the leadership of André Breton, of Trotskyist orientation. On various occasions, Breton demanded explanations from Dalí for his political connections. In any case, by 1970 Dalí declared himself an "anarcho-monarchist", giving rise to numerous speculations about this (undoubtedly minority) political orientation.

With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Dalí avoided the conflict and refused to declare his support for either side. Likewise, after the Second World War, Dalí was criticized by George Orwell, who accused him of "scuttling off like a rat as soon as France was in danger", after having lived and prospered there for years:

When the European war approaches, he is concerned with only one thing: finding a place where one eats well and from which he can escape quickly should danger draw near.

After his return to Catalonia following the war, Dalí drew closer to the Francoist regime. Some of Dalí's statements served as support for the dictatorship; thus he congratulated Franco on his actions aimed at "cleansing Spain of destructive forces". Dalí, who had converted to Catholicism and became a more religious person over the years, may have been referring to the communist, socialist and anarchist groups that during the Civil War had executed more than seven thousand nuns and priests. Dalí even sent some telegrams to Franco, praising the death sentences with which the dictator had condemned some war criminals. Dalí even met Franco personally and painted a portrait of the dictator's granddaughter. In 1972 he received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts from the hands of Minister José Luis Villar Palasí himself.

It is difficult to determine whether his gestures toward Francoism were sincere or capricious, since he combined them with decidedly surrealist displays, such as congratulating the Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu for including a scepter among his attributes. The Romanian newspaper Scînteia reported this news without noticing its mocking nature. In any case, one of the issues on which Dalí showed unquestionable disaffection with the regime was the controversial murder of the poet Federico García Lorca by Francoist militias, which he denounced even in the years when the poet's work was officially banned.

If I die, I will not die completely.

— Salvador Dalí.

Dalí, with his striking presence and his ever-present cape and barretina, carrying a cane and wearing a solemn expression framed by his showy mustache, forged an image of a megalomaniac with statements such as "every morning, upon waking, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí". A curious habit of Dalí's was keeping all the ballpoint pens with which he signed his autographs. Interviewed by Mike Wallace for the program 60 Minutes, the artist kept referring to himself in the third person, going so far as to declare that "Dalí is immortal and will not die". In another of his television appearances, on The Tonight Show, the artist appeared carrying a leather rhinoceros, and refused to sit anywhere else. Salvador Dalí frequently traveled with his pet, an ocelot named Babou, taking it with him even on the luxury ocean liner SS France. He was also known for avoiding tips in restaurants, preferring to draw on the checks with which he paid. He thought that the restaurant would not want to part with such a highly valued work of art, and he was generally right.

Work

Sculpture Rhinoceros Dressed in Lace, 1956. Puerto Banús, Marbella.

Representation of Dalí's signature at the entrance of the former Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States.

'The gallery owner, the artist and the collector'. Plaque at the Galerie Dali in Montmartre, Paris

A principal characteristic of Dalí's work is the meticulous detail of his forms, which can be considered symbolic. These display, in an unconscious manner, the very reality of the artist, always showing opposites that complement each other; this was called the paranoiac-critical method. The clearest examples of this are life and death, the real and the imaginary, giving primacy to the mental over the physical; one can even observe a relationship between the static and movement. What he does with the objects he depicts is a destruction of the object itself, as an attempt to prove that such an object exists in reality, which, although centered on the unconscious, offers a hyperreal alternative that confuses the mind.

His work is also directly related to the principles of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. In the first place, the defense mechanisms become evident, the most common being paranoia as a projection of fears attributed to someone external to the individual. Sexuality also plays an important role in Dalí's work and in psychoanalysis, in which, according to the theory of psychosexual development, it is believed that from the mother's womb fixations and traumas develop that will be linked to behavior, but these are suppressed in the unconscious.

Painting

Main page: Category:Paintings by Salvador Dalí

Dalí produced some 1,500 paintings over the course of his career, in addition to dozens of book illustrations, lithographs, stage designs, costumes, and an enormous number of drawings, sculptures and parallel projects in photography and film. He collaborated on the film Dalí in New York (1965), by Jack Bond.

The biography Sex, Surrealism, Dalí and Me, co-written by Carlos Lozano and Clifford Thurlow, states that Dalí never stopped being a surrealist. As he once said, paraphrasing himself, "the only difference between the surrealists and me is that I am a surrealist."

The following is a list of some of Dalí's most important works and actions during his career.

• Landscape near Figueres (1910)
• Vilabertran (1913)
• Festival in Figueres (1916)
• View of Cadaqués with the Shadow of Mount Pani (1917)
• Crepuscular Old Man (1918)
• Port of Cadaqués (Night) and Self-Portrait in the Studio (1919)
• The Artist's Father at Llaner Beach and View of Portdogué (Port Aluger) (1920)
• Garden at Llaner (Cadaqués) and Self-Portrait (1921)
• Cabaret Scene and Night-Walking Dreams (1922)
• Self-Portrait with Humanity and Cubist Self-Portrait with La Publicitat (1923)
• Still Life with Bottle of Rum and Portrait of Luis Buñuel (1924)
• Large Harlequin and Small Bottle of Rum and a series of realistic portraits of his sister Ana María, especially Young Woman at a Window (1925)
• Portrait of My Father (1925)
• The Basket of Bread and Young Woman of Figueres (1926)
• Composition with Three Figures (Neo-Cubist Academy) and Honey Is Sweeter than Blood (his first important surrealist work) (1927)
• The Lugubrious Game, The Great Masturbator, The First Days of Spring, The Profanation of the Host, The Enigma of Desire, The Invisible Man, Illumined Pleasures and Portrait of Paul Éluard (1929).
• The Golden Age, a film in collaboration with Luis Buñuel (1930)
• The Persistence of Memory (his best-known work, also called The Soft Watches), The Old Age of William Tell, and William Tell and Gradiva (1931)
• The Specter of Sex Appeal, The Birth of Liquid Desires, Anthropomorphic Bread, and Fried Eggs on the Plate without the Plate. He finishes The Invisible Man (begun in 1929) (although he was not very satisfied with the result) (1932)
• Retrospective Bust of a Woman (mixed-media sculpture) and Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder, Gala at the Window (1933)
• The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used as a Table, Meditation on the Harp (begun in 1932) and An Impression of Speed (1934)
• Portrait of Mae West Which Can Be Used as a Surrealist Apartment, Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's "Angelus" and Knight of Death (1935)
• Autumnal Cannibalism, Lobster Telephone, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds and two works titled Morphological Echo (1936)
• Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Swans Reflecting Elephants, The Burning Giraffe, The Dream, The Enigma of Hitler, Mae West Lips Sofa and Cannibalism in Autumn (1937)
• The Sublime Moment, Impressions of Africa and Invisible Afghan with the Apparition on the Beach of the Face of García Lorca in the Form of a Fruit Dish with Three Figs (1938)
• Shirley Temple, the Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time (1939)
• Slave Market (with the Apparition of the Invisible Bust of Voltaire) and The Face of War (1940)
• Honey Is Sweeter than Blood (1941)
• The Poetry of America, Portrait of Ambassador Cárdenas, and Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943)
• Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening and Galarina (1944)
• Hidden Faces (novel) (1944-48)
• My Wife Nude, Basket of Bread – Rather Death than Shame, Fountain of Milk Spreading Itself Uselessly on Three Shoes; that same year, Dalí collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on the sequence for the film Spellbound, to mutual dissatisfaction (1945)
• The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1946)
• The Elephants (1948)
• Sets and costume designs for Zorrilla's play Don Juan Tenorio at the Teatro María Guerrero in Madrid, premiered on November 1, 1949
• Leda Atomica (1949)
• The Madonna of Port Lligat (1950)
• Christ of Saint John of the Cross and Raphaelesque Head Exploding (1951)
• Galatea of the Spheres (1952)
• Dalí Nude, in Contemplation Before the Five Regular Bodies Metamorphosed into Corpuscles, in Which Suddenly Appears the Leda of Leonardo Chromosomatized by the Face of Gala, Crucifixion, The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory and Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity (1954)
• The Last Supper, Solitary Echo, a record cover for Jackie Gleason (1955)
• Still Life Moving Fast, Rhinoceros Dressed in Lace (1956)
• Santiago El Grande, oil on canvas on permanent display at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, NB, Canada, 1957.
• Meditative Rose (1958)
• The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1959)
• Dalí begins the works on the Dalí Theatre-Museum. He paints the Portrait of Juan de Pareja, Assistant to Velázquez. Human Figure in the Shape of a Cloud (1960)
• Portrait of My Dead Brother (1963)
• The Apotheosis of the Dollar. Dalí donates a drawing of the crucifixion (tempera, pencil and ink) to the Rikers Island prison in New York. The drawing hung in the prison's dining hall between 1965 and 1981.
• Dalí in New York (1965)
• Tuna Fishing (1967)
• He creates the logo of Chupa Chups (1969)
• The Hallucinogenic Toreador, acquired in 1969 by A. Reynolds Morse and Eleanor R. Morse before it was finished (1970)
• La Toile Daligram (1972)
• Dalí from the Back Painting Gala from the Back and Les Dîners de Gala, a profusely illustrated cookbook (1973)
• Man on a Dolphin (1974)
• Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea (1976)
• The Hand of Dalí Drawing Back a Golden Fleece in the Form of a Cloud to Show Gala the Completely Nude Dawn, Very, Very Far Away Behind the Sun (stereoscopic painting) (1977)
• Dalí finishes his last painting, The Swallow's Tail (1983)
• Premiere of [Destino] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), an animated cartoon production created as a result of a 1945 collaboration with Walt Disney (2003)

Sculpture

Bust of Salvador Dalí, by Arno Breker (1975)

Inspired by his visual art, from which it takes up various images, Salvador Dalí's sculptural production comprises various series. One of the most famous is the Collection of original sculptures by Salvador Dalí, also known as the Clot Collection, which consists of 54 sculptures made in the 1970s, entirely by the hand of Salvador Dalí without the intervention of third parties, for Isidro Clot (Isidro Clot Fuentes) and Juan Quirós (Juan González-Quirós y Corujo). This is the last stage of the Spanish surrealist's production.

These sculptures were made at the time when Enrique Sabater was Salvador Dalí's personal secretary and collaborator.

Salvador Dalí created the original models of these 54 sculptures in white modeling wax. These sculptures were made by Dalí's own hand, without the intervention of third parties, which makes them unique.

Once Dalí had made the original model, it was taken by Enrique Sabater and Juan Quirós to the founders for the making of the original mold (all of the original molds of these 54 sculptures are the property of Juan Quirós).

The stages of this process can be seen in Memoria de los Sueños. Salvador Dalí, 1904-1984, published by the Consortium of Museums of the Valencian Community.^. The exhibition was curated by Enrique Sabater, who had been Dalí's secretary at the time he made the sculptures.

Dalí also authorized other sculptures to be made from some of his original watercolors and gouaches.

Like his painting, Dalí's sculptures belong to a surrealist style, which is based on the First Surrealist Manifesto written by André Breton in 1924, in which he sets out a position in favor of irrationality. On this basis, Dalí postulates what he calls psychic automatism, a dictation and execution of the unconscious without the regulating intervention of reason. This, in turn, is directly related to the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud.

Surrealism is a movement that arose in the period after the First World War, as a reaction of nonconformity to acts of war, as well as disgust toward bourgeois and materialistic society. In the opinion of the surrealists, the great importance given to science and technology were consequences of the war. One of Dalí's most important contributions within the surrealist circle was the creation of the paranoiac-critical method: a search for opposites that complement each other in a spontaneous and irrational way. Freud defined the concept of the Unconscious and Breton translated the conception into an artistic-literary method.

In his works, Dalí, as a versatile reader genuinely interested in subjects such as science and literature, was fascinated by various medieval characters for the creation of some of his pieces; he took up the story of Saint George and the dragon, Lady Godiva, or the lady and the unicorn. In all of them Dalí depicted the horse rearing and with great strength, a symbol and testimony of masculinity.

Notable sculptures include:

• The Two Nikes – The Double Victory of Samothrace, Homage to Raymond Roussel (1965/66)
• Gala Gradiva (1972/73)
• Giraffe Woman (1973)
• Saint John the Baptist (1973)
• Nude Woman Climbing the Staircase (Birth of Venus) (1974)
• Cosmic Elephant (1974)
• Trajan on Horseback (1974)
• Laughing Horse's Head (1974)
• Perseus, Homage to Benvenuto Cellini (1974/75)
• Sun God Emerging in Okinawa (1975)
• Mercury (1973)
• Triumphant Angel (1976)
• Icarus (1976)
• Housekeeper (1976)
• Alice in Wonderland (1977)
• Homage to Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance (1975/76)
• Surrealist Newton (1977)
• Profile of Time (1977)
• Gemini (1978)
• The Dance of Time series (1979)
• Horse Saddled with Time (1980)
• The Space Elephant (1980)
• Woman Aflame (1980)

Literature

Also encouraged by his friend Federico García Lorca, Dalí tried his hand at literary creation in a "pure novel." In his only literary work, Dalí describes in colorful terms the intrigues and love affairs of a group of eccentric and frivolous aristocrats who, with their luxurious and sophisticated lifestyle, represent the decadence of the 1930s.

Museography

The largest collection of Dalí's works is gathered at the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, followed by the collection of the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, which received the private collection of A. Reynolds Morse and his wife. It brings together some 1,500 pieces by Dalí. Other significant collections are distributed among the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Salvador Dalí Gallery in Pacific Palisades (California), Dalí Paris in Montmartre (Paris), and the Dalí Universe in London (traveling), which hold an extensive collection of drawings and sculptures.

The most unusual exhibition space for Dalí's work was the Rikers Island prison in New York: a sketch of a Crucifixion donated by the author hung for 16 years in the communal dining hall, before being moved to the penitentiary's offices for its safety. The drawing was stolen in 2003 and has not reappeared.

An example of the singular power of Dalí's work to draw people is found in the successive retrospectives of his work held in various European museums. Thus, the Centre Pompidou in France attracted more than 840,000 people in 1979; and in the 2012-2013 season it drew more than 790,000 visitors during the five months that another similar exhibition lasted. These two retrospectives hold the visitor record for an exhibition at the aforementioned Centre Pompidou, followed by those of Matisse (1993, 734,896 visitors) and Kandinsky (2009, 702,905 visitors).
In another exhibition in Spain, the retrospective Dalí. All the Poetic Suggestions and All the Plastic Possibilities attracted more than 730,000 people to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid over the summer of 2013.

Museums dedicated exclusively to Dalí

Managed by the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation

• Dalí Theatre-Museum (Figueres, Spain).
• Salvador Dalí House-Museum (Cadaqués, Spain).
• Púbol Castle (La Pera, Spain).

Abroad

• Salvador Dalí Museum (St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.).
• Dalí Paris (Paris, France).
• Dalí – The Exhibition at Potsdamer Platz (Berlin, Germany).

Dalí and film

Salvador Dalí maintained an intense relationship with film, as shown by his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney and Luis Buñuel. In his film work there are references to his works, such as The Rotten Donkey, Un chien andalou, The Soul, The Wheelbarrow of Flesh and Babaouo. He collaborated with Buñuel on An Andalusian Dog, in which the iconography of The Rotten Donkey is shown visually materialized with elements such as "shit, blood and putrefaction." Thus, it evokes surrealist images such as disappointment, displeasure and repulsion. He also made The Golden Age with Buñuel.

Shortly after his collaborations with the director, he published Babaouo, in which he repeats dead or decapitated animals, with blindfolded eyes and a large loaf of bread on the head. Macrostructures and gigantic elements are a constant in Dalí's visual art, that is, fifteen-meter beds with recumbent cypresses, gigantic spoons, enormous sheets hanging from façades, etc. These elements tend to recur in numerous surrealist screenplays. In 1997 Manuel Cussó-Ferrer made a film based on Salvador Dalí's screenplay.

Had the work The Soul been filmed, it would have been a precedent for the "neo-mystical film" in the history of Spanish cinema, with characters such as Saint Teresa and the worm turned into a butterfly. We can also see his mark in a dream sequence he created for Spellbound, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, which was left out of the final cut by decision of one of the producers. Dalí also took part in Walt Disney's animated film Destino. He prepared a hundred drawings, paintings and scripts for this project, although the film was never released. Nevertheless, it was recreated in 2003 at the Tate Modern.

Although he produced paintings, drawings, screenplays and some essays related to cinematography, many of his works were a disappointment to the author, as he set out in his work Dalí and Film, in which he described the seventh art as:

An itinerant dream capable of offering new possibilities.

— Salvador Dalí

Dalí in film

• Jean-Christophe Averty & Robert Descharnes. Salvador Dalí, 1970.
• Carlos Saura. Buñuel and King Solomon's Table, 2001.
• 2009: Sin límites, by Paul Morrison, Robert Pattinson as Salvador Dalí.
• 2011: Midnight in Paris, by Woody Allen, Adrien Brody as Salvador Dalí.
• 2018: Money Heist (La casa de papel), masks based on the

See also

• Surrealism
• Portlligat
• René Magritte
• Remedios Varo
• Leonora Carrington
• Frida Kahlo
• Leonor Fini
• Francesc Pujols

Bibliography

Catalogue raisonné

• Catalogue raisonné of paintings

Complete works

Ediciones Destino and the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation have published the Complete Works of Salvador Dalí in seven volumes:

• Volumen I: Textos autobiográficos 1 (in español). 2003. ISBN 978-84-233-3569-5.
• Volumen II: Textos autobiográficos 2 (in español). 2003. ISBN 978-84-233-3570-1.
• Volumen III: Prosa, teatro, cine y poesía (in español). 2004. ISBN 978-84-233-3626-5.
• Volumen IV: Ensayos I (in español). 2005. ISBN 978-84-233-3779-8.
• Volumen V: Ensayos II (in español). 2005. ISBN 978-84-233-3780-4.
• Volumen VI: Álbum (in español). 2004. ISBN 978-84-233-3627-2.
• Volumen VII: Entrevistas (in español). 2006. ISBN 978-84-233-3880-1.

About Dalí

• ADES, Dawn (2004). Dalí (in español). Madrid: La esfera de los libros. ISBN 978-84-9734-226-1.
• DALÍ, Salvador (July 1993). Vida secreta de Salvador Dalí (in español). Barcelona: Editorial Antártida. ISBN 84-7596-414-1.
• DESCHARNES, Robert; Néret, Gilles (2005). Dalí. La obra pictórica (in español). Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8228-1213-6.
• GENZMER, Herbert (1998). Dalí und Gala. Der Maler und die Muse (in Deutsch). Reinbek: Rowohlt Verlag. ISBN 3-87134-338-2.
• GIBSON, Ian (2002). Salvador Dalí (in Deutsch). Stuttgart. ISBN 3-421-05133-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• LEAR, Amanda (1985). Dalí – 15 Jahre mit Salvador Dalí (in Deutsch). Munich: Goldmann Verlag. ISBN 3-442-06805-3.
• LLONGUERAS, Luís (2004). Dalí (in español). Barcelona: Ediciones B. ISBN 8466613439.
• SABLER, Linde. Dalí. London: Haus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-904341-75-8.
• SCHIEBLER, Ralf (2004). Dalí – Die Wirklichkeit der Träume (in Deutsch). Munich: Prestel Verlag. ISBN 3-7913-2979-0.
• THIOLLET, Jean-Pierre (2008). Carré d'Art: Salvador Dalí (in français). Paris: Anagramme Ed. ISBN 2 35035 189 6. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• WEIDEMANN, Christiane (2007). Salvador Dalí (in Deutsch). Reihe LIVING ART. Munich: Prestel Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7913-3815-6.

External links

VR 360°

• Dreams of Dalí: a journey through the mind of Salvador Dalí on YouTube

Images

• Paintings from the period 1910-1928 (in English)
• Paintings from the period 1929-1935 (in English)
• Paintings from the period 1936-1939 (in English)
• Paintings from the period 1939-1946 (in English)
• Paintings from the period 1946-1962 (in English)
• Paintings from the period 1962-1989 (in English)
• Thirty-six paintings by Dalí
• Some of his principal paintings
• The largest virtual picture gallery: 1,174 works by Salvador Dalí

Websites

• Website of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation
• Dalinian Triangle - Salvador Dalí
• Interviews and appearances of Dalí on French television
• Complete short film "Un Perro Andaluz"
• Photo library specializing in Dalí
• Dalí Museum of Saint Petersburg, Florida
• Dalí Museum of Bruges
• Dalí Espace Montmartre, Paris (in French)
• Real Círculo Artístico de Barcelona — Dalí Collection
• Works by Salvador Dalí in French public collections of modern and contemporary art (in French)
• Biography and works of Dalí
• Salvador Dalí. Literary work
• Page about the Destino project by Dalí and Walt Disney
• Dalí designed a falla
• The nude in Dalí's work

Articles

• "La de Lorca y Dalí fue una historia de amor", by Ian Gibson.
• ABC de Sevilla, "Dalí fue un tímido patológico", by Ian Gibson.

Documentaries

• RTVE documentary Revelando a Dalí
• Doc Doc Films documentary Dalí, la última gran obra

Interviews

• Joaquín Soler Serrano interviews Salvador Dalí on the TVE program A fondo, on Nov. 27, 1977.
  • Introduction to the interview by Soler Serrano himself, in 2001.
• Jacobo Zabludovsky interviews Salvador Dalí.
• Últimas declaraciones públicas de Salvador Dalí antes de morir (Salvador Dalí's last public statements before his death) on YouTube