Salvador Dali Art

Instantly recognisable with his Velazquez-inspired moustache and his cape, Dali developed into a caricature of himself latterly, a role he relished and encouraged. An artistic polymath, excelling in many fields of expression, Dali found inspiration and creative mediums everywhere. However, without doubt, his genius was most evident through his surrealist paintings. Indeed, although he was rejected by the surrealists of the time, he remains the poster-child for the movement today. He was incredibly productive throughout his life, almost to the end, leaving us with a vast treasure trove of exquisite technique and though-provoking images that inspire fans the world over decades after his death. Dali's artistic talent was recognised at a young age. Encouraged and perhaps over indulged by his mother, Dali had his first private exhibition at the age of 13 and his first public one a year later.

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Spanish artist Salvador Dali was a groundbreaking icon of the Surrealist movement and one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. His work probed the unconscious world of thoughts, dreams and perception in fanciful and nightmarish images influenced by Freud, Cubism, Futurism and metaphysical art. Spanish artist Salvador Dali was a groundbreaking icon of the Surrealist movement and one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. His work probed the unconscious world of thoughts, dreams and perception in fanciful and nightmarish images influenced by Freud, Cubism, Futurism and metaphysical art.

• The Spanish painter Salvador Dali remains one of the most controversial and paradoxical artists of the twentieth century. Over the last few decades, Salvador Dali has gradually come to be seen, alongside the likes of Picasso and Matisse, as a prodigious figure whose life and work occupies a central and unique position in the history of modern art.
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• Salvador Dali Art Gallery is a tribute to one of the great abstract artists of our time. The site includes a wealth of information about the artist, including an extensive gallery of masterpiece paintings, drawings, watercolors and objects. Also included is information on abstract art.

It seemed a natural progression for him to study art in Madrid, where he was exposed to the works of all the greats, from Raphael to Velazquez. He explored all manner of styles including impressionism and cubism and began to develop a new 'hybrid' style which quickly drew the attention of critics, good and bad. However, by far the greatest influence on his work came after he finished his formal education from two of the great men of his day; Pablo Picasso, and Sigmund Freud. Dali was a huge fan of Picasso's when he met him in Paris through an introduction from Joan Miro. Miro had spoken highly of Salvador’s work to Picasso, and it is said that Picasso recognised Dali's genius almost immediately. Picasso's cubism is apparent in a vast array of Dali's work throughout his career. Strangely, Freud’s influence on the young Dali was even more profound.

It was Freud's ground-breaking papers on the symbolism of sexuality in the psyche that encouraged Dali to search his subconscious for what was to become his signature dream images. He returned again and again to Freud's writings for inspiration. We can also learn a lot about his own mind through the various portraits and self-portraits that can be found right across his career. Salvador Dali was predominantly a Surrealist painter who experimented with other art movements. Whilst drawing skills were the basis of all of his art, his painting ideas and techniques came from the Renaissance period, which has been influential on many famous names from the art world. He even incorporated some of their specific work into his own unqiue style. Dali was an ambitious and open minded artist whose career went far beyond the oil paintings found here.

He was also involved in film, sculpture and photography to various degrees, always looking for new ways to use his creativity. The nearest comparison with Dali would be fellow Spaniard, Pablo Picasso, who offered similar innovation, variety and productivity over an extended period of time. They both produced Cubist work, whilst Picasso was more on the fringes of the Surrealist group. Dali was also involved with Dadaism along with George Grosz and Marcel Duchamp. This section provides some of the most famous Salvador Dali paintings as a summary of his career, with more available throughout the website. There is also our Dali sculptures section. This artist remains the most significant exponent of Surrealism, with other notable contributors including Rene Magritte, André Masson, Max Ernst, André Breton, Yves Tanguy, Giorgio de Chirico and Joan Miró.

The Rise of Surrealism

Today, Dali is considered the quintessential surrealist. Even though Salvador himself came rather late to the party, so to speak, he remains the most influential and highly regarded master of the style. Surrealism was born from the chaos of Dadaism after the second world war. Prominent in Europe and latterly America, it was a chaotic reaction to the social structures that activists believed caused the Great War. Dadaism was an expression of a broken system which produced anything and everything that was disassembled and non-art. While the chaos that was Dadaism was short lived, the freeing random nature of it is said to have informed the creation of several artistic movements such as surrealism, post-modernism and ultimately pop art in the 1960's. French writer and anti-fascist Andre Breton is widely considered to be the founding father of the surrealist movement which suggests that the purest expression of human truth comes from the subconscious, and every effort should be made to allow it to come forward.

Breton's group attracted many intellectuals of the day including Joan Miro, Rene Magritte and Dali’s close friend Federico Garcia Lorca. Dali was delighted to join a group of free-thinkers and welcomed the opportunity to discuss new ideas with them. The group in turn were fascinated with Salvador’s techniques for accessing the dream state and expressing what he found there. This method, which Dali called the Paranoiac- Critical Method in which Salvador induced hallucinations from his subconscious, became pivotal in the artist's work as it prompted his first and perhaps most profound surreal work, The Persistence of Memory (1931). However, the surrealists, as a movement, were anti-fascists and when they could rouse no political fervour from Dali, even in the face of the rising Franco in his own country, they had to expel him. Nonetheless, the ideology and inspiration for his art founded in the surrealist manifesto continued to inform Dali’s work for the rest of his life.

Imagery and Meaning

Symbolism and imagery are the mainstay of Dali's work. Throughout his life he used several persistent images conveying his inner-most thought and feelings, some beautiful and some very disturbing. His most famous imagery is that of the melting watches in The Persistence of Memory (1931), largely thought to be inspired by Einstein’s theory of relativity and the fact that time is not fixed. Soft watches as a means of conveying scientific discovery regarding time are found again in The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954). The painting symbolises the destruction of conventional wisdom and the new theory of Quantum Physics.

Further images often used by Dali were elephants as in Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee (1944). Elephants, as they were depicted, with spindly legs, were a classic surrealist juxtaposition; these huge animals would surely never be supported by such thin legs. Dali suggested however that their pure spirituality caused them to be light and beautiful at the same time powerful and strong, therefore the legs were shackles to keep them connected to the earth for fear they would leave. He is said to have thought his elephants the most perfect expression of being and they brought him great joy. Other animals feature frequently too.

In The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) Dali displays yet another of his favourite recurring symbols, the egg. Thought to be an indicator of prenatal or in uterine world with a soft interior protected by a hard shell, they are most commonly used to signify hope and love, in this example however, it is an indicator of decay and death. The loss of everything due to vanity. Dali frequently used many other images including ants and snails, drawers and sea creatures. The use of these symbols has become a type of shorthand for those who follow his work, offering a unique insight into the mind of a genius.

Classical Period

Obviously the most famous paintings by Dali are surrealist in nature, but it is important to remember what a remarkable technician he was. In fact, some of his most exquisite and technically brilliant work was created in the 1940’s and 50’ during what is referred to as his classical period. There is not a complete departure from his symbolism and imagery, but there is a much more traditional feel to the works of this time frame and some even have religious based subjects including, Christ of St John of the Cross (1951) which depicts Christ on a cross floating over a body of water and The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955) which took and uncharacteristic nine months to complete. Both of these paintings are beautifully rendered with a profound depth, but the meanings are not as complicated to decipher as some of his more figurative work.

The Legacy of Genius

Love him or loath him, even after death Dali can still provoke extreme emotion. In his lifetime, it was his pleasure to offend and outrage thousands while at the same time delight legions more. However, ultimately his legacy has been that of inspiration. A man of boundless curiosity and capacity for learning and experimentation, he left the art world with innumerable techniques to explore; Roy Lichtenstein, the celebrated pop artist, was famous for using enlarged half-tone dot grids in his work, a technique pioneered by Dali, and Andy Warhol claimed to have been greatly influenced by Salvador's body of work, going as far as to postulate that the entire pop art movement would not have existed without him. Today, of course, Dali lives on as an icon of excess and eccentricity. He has been portrayed in several movies and there are countless books about his life and work. He continues to inspire artists, young and old, to think outside of the box and create anything that will make people wonder.

A Century of Salvador Dalí

The man. The master. The marvel. Salvador Dalí is one of the most celebrated artists of all time. His fiercely technical yet highly unusual paintings, sculptures and visionary explorations in film and life-size interactive art ushered in a new generation of imaginative expression. From his personal life to his professional endeavors, he always took great risks and proved how rich the world can be when you dare to embrace pure, boundless creativity.

Discover the life and legend of Salvador Dalí, and get to know the people, places and events that transformed this Spanish son into a surrealist sensation. The following timeline outlines the chronology of Dalí's life and work.

Salvador Dali Art For Sale

The Surreal Journey Begins

Salvador Dalí was born on May 11, 1904 to parents Salvador Dalí Cusi, a prominent notary, and Felipa Domenech Ferres, a gentle mother who often indulged young Salvador’s eccentric behavior. Felipa was a devout Catholic and the elder Salvador an Atheist, which was a combination that heavily influenced their son’s worldview. Dalí’s artistic talent was obvious from a young age, and both of his parents supported it—though it is known that the relationship with his disciplinarian father was strained. Ultimately, Dalí’s raw creativity and defiant attitude would distance him from his father, but it would also become the cornerstone of his wildly imaginative artistic feats.

Surreal Fact

In 1903, Horatio Jackson made the first automobile trip across America. It took him 64 full days to drive from San Francisco to NYC.

Budding Brilliance

Dalí’s father quickly realized that his son wasn’t fit for public school, so he enrolled 6-year-old Salvador in the Hispano-French School of the Immaculate Conception where he learned French, the primary language he would later use as an artist. Dalí spent his childhood and early adolescence in Catalonia—school years in Figueres and breaks in the coastal village of Cadaques where his family had a summer home. There, he drew and painted the seaside landscape and met his early mentor Ramon Pichot. Cadaques is also where Dalí’s parents built him his first art studio.

Surreal Fact

In 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris. It took two years to recover Leonardo da Vinci's missing masterpiece.

School Is Out. Surrealism Is In.

Dalí’s tumultuous 1920s life perfectly reflected the decade’s “roaring” nickname. Four years after being accepted to the San Fernando Academy of Art in Madrid, he was expelled after refusing to be examined in the theory of art and declaring the examiners incompetent to judge him. He experimented with futurism, impressionism and cubism, and during one of his several trips to Paris, movement leader Andre Breton exposed him to the world of Surrealism. In 1925, Dalí had his first solo exhibition in Barcelona, and the decade saw his works showcased throughout the world. After leaving the Academy, Dalí returned to Catalonia where his art became increasingly bizarre and even grotesque.

Surreal Fact

In 1925, a diphtheria outbreak in rural Alaska prompted 18 dog-sled teams to travel 674 miles to bring medicine to those in need. The Iditarod commemorates this trek every year.

Trials, Trouble and Travel

The thirties watched Dalí transform from a key figure in the Surrealist movement into its enemy. After becoming a prominent figure of the group, he was nearly expelled after a “trial” in 1934. His dismissal was due to his apolitical stance, his personal feud with leader Andre Breton, and his public antics. In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War started and Dalí and his wife remained in Paris, where he continued evolving his artistic style. He was heavily influenced by the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, whom Dalí met in 1938. In 1939 Andre Breton definitively expelled Dalí from Surrealism.

Surreal Fact

When Betty Boop made her cartoon debut in 1930, her character was actually a dog and not a woman.

Inspiring Awe In America

Dalí and Gala spent the better part of the 1940s in America after fleeing WWII. During the couple’s eight years stateside, New York’s MOMA gallery presented the artist’s first retrospective and he explored new creative expressions on film. He teamed up with Alfred Hitchcock to create dream-like sequences for Spellbound and was later hired by Walt Disney to complete the art and storyboards for what would ultimately become the film Destino. At the very end of the decade and from the comfort of this homeland Catalonia, Dalí entered his noteworthy classical period.

Surreal Fact

Naval engineer Richard James invented the Slinky toy by accident when he was trying to build a ship horsepower monitor using steel tension springs during WWII.

Mystical Measures

Salvador Dalí was in the heart of his classical period throughout the 1950s. He created nineteen large canvases characterized by meticulously detailed images of religious, historical and scientific themes, or what Dalí called “nuclear mysticism.” He became obsessed with geometry, DNA, divinity and experimented heavily with visual illusions. From a personal perspective, his growing affinity for religious themes prompted he and Gala, his muse and the love of his life, to remarry—this time, in a Catholic church.

Surreal Fact

The C.I.A. secretly funded and revised the 1954 animated film version of George Orwell’s allegorical novel Animal Farm.

An Icon In Every Dimension

From awe-inspiring works to distinctively high praise, Dalí continued breaking boundaries throughout the sixties. He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, one of Spain’s highest distinctions and began work on what would become the Teatro-Museo Dalí (The Dalí Theatre-Museum) in his hometown of Figueres All the while, Dalí’s deepening interests in space and science were powerfully reflected in his work. He strived to explore and challenge what was possible in the third dimension, and became fascinated with the fourth, or immortality.

Surreal Fact

In 1962, three incarcerated criminals attempted to escape Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary on an inflatable raft. It is still unknown whether they were successful or died in the act.

Evolving Perspectives

Even as he aged and his health began to decline, Salvador Dalí remained resilient in his artistic quest to examine life from every possible angle. He continued to paint—endlessly challenging visual norms with holographic and stereoscopic imagery—all the while dedicating much of his time to opening the Teatro-Museo Dalí, which still sits just a few blocks away from his birthplace. Moreover, Dalí remained a prominent public figure and celebrity with retrospectives exhibiting all over the world.

Salvador Dali Art Period

Surreal Fact

The world’s first gourmet jelly bean brand (later dubbed Jelly Belly) debuted in 1975 with unusual flavors like licorice, root beer, cream soda and tangerine.

Salvador Dali Artist

Death Or Immortality?

In the last years of his life, and following the death of his dear wife Gala, Dalí painted less and less. Still fascinated by the ideas of immortality and the fourth dimension, his last works were mathematical in nature—challenging the plasticity of life as we know it. In 1984, Dalí was severely injured in a house fire at his Pubol castle and was confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. Friends, followers and fellow artists then moved him back to Figueres to live at the Teatro-Museo where he died of heart failure on January 23, 1989 at the age of 84.

Surreal Fact

In 1985, denture manufacturers stopped using radioactive uranium in their porcelain. The toxic material was added for decades to give false teeth a natural look.

Living On Through Imagination

Even after death, Salvador Dalí’s star didn’t fade. In 1990, his estate was split between Madrid and Catalonia, and many prominent exhibitions of the artist’s work continued to show throughout the world. From Montreal, London and Spain to Tokyo, Venice and the United States, Dalí’s indescribable talent and extraordinary creativity has become a universal language of fearlessness, inspiration and relentless self-expression. The Dalí Museum continues to honor the work and memory of its namesake with an expansive permanent collection, educational programming and world-class exhibits featuring other notable artists, including Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso.

Surreal Fact

Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned, was born in 1996 and lived for six and a half years.