Expulsion from the Surrealists
As war approached in Europe, specifically in Spain, Dalí clashed with members of the Surrealist movement. In a «trial» held in 1934, he was expelled from the group. He had refused to take a stance against Spanish militant Francisco Franco (while Surrealist artists like Luis Buñuel, Picasso and Miró had), but it’s unclear whether this directly led to his expulsion. Officially, Dalí was notified that his expulsion was due to repeated «counter-revolutionary activity involving the celebration of fascism under Adolf Hitler.» It is also likely that members of the movement were aghast at some of Dalí’s public antics. However, some art historians believe that his expulsion had been driven more by his feud with Surrealist leader André Breton.
Despite his expulsion from the movement, Dalí continued to participate in several international Surrealist exhibitions into the 1940s. At the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition in 1936, he delivered a lecture titled «Fantomes paranoiaques athentiques» («Authentic paranoid ghosts») while dressed in a wetsuit, carrying a billiard cue and walking a pair of Russian wolfhounds. He later said that his attire was a depiction of «plunging into the depths» of the human mind.
During World War II, Dalí and his wife moved to the United States. They remained there until 1948, when they moved back to his beloved Catalonia. These were important years for Dalí. The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York gave him his own retrospective exhibit in 1941. This was followed by the publication of his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942). Also during this time, Dalí’s focus moved away from Surrealism and into his classical period. His feud with members of the Surrealist movement continued, but Dalí seemed undaunted. His ever-expanding mind had ventured into new subjects.
Paternity Case and New Exhibition
On June 26, 2017, a judge in a Madrid court ordered that Dalí’s body be exhumed to settle a paternity case. A 61-year-old Spanish woman named María Pilar Abel Martínez claimed that her mother had an affair with the artist while she was working as a maid for his neighbors in Port Lligat, a town in northeastern Spain.
The judge ordered the artist’s body to be exhumed because of a «lack of other biological or personal remains» to compare to Martinez’s DNA. The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, which manages Dalí’s estate, appealed the ruling, but the exhumation went ahead the following month. In September, results from the DNA tests revealed that Dalí was not father.
That October, the artist was back in the news with the announcement of an exhibition at the Dalí museum in Saint Petersburg, Florida, to celebrate his friendship and collaboration with Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli. The two were known for the joint creation of a «lobster dress» worn by American socialite Wallis Simpson, who later married English King Edward VIII.
«],[«
«],[«
«]]» tml-render-layout=»inline»>
#1 The Persistence of Memory
The Persistence of Memory (1931)
| Spanish Title: | La persistencia de la memoria |
| Location: | Museum of Modern Art, New York City, U.S. |
| Year: | 1931 |
This iconic and much-reproduced painting depicts a scene with watches melting slowly on rocks and the branch of a tree, with the ocean as a back drop. Dali uses the concept of hard and soft in this painting. This concept may be illustrated in a number of ways like the human mind moving from the softness of sleep to the hardness of reality. In his masterpiece, Dali uses melting watches and rocks to represent the soft and hard aspects of the world respectively. The Persistence of Memory has been much analyzed over the years as Dali never explained his work. The melting watches have been thought to be an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time; as a symbol of mortality with the ants surrounding the watches representing decay; and as irrationality of dreams. The Persistence of Memory is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of twentieth century art. It is not only the most famous painting of Salvador Dali but also the most renowned artwork in Surrealism.
#9 Tuna Fishing (Homage to Meissonier)
Tuna Fishing (1967)
| Spanish Title: | La Pesca del Atún |
| Location: | Foundation Paul Ricard, Ile de Bandol, France |
| Year: | 1967 |
This painting was created by Salvador Dali at the end of his illustrious career and is considered to be his last great masterpiece. He spent two summers to create the artwork in which, apart from surrealism, he has used styles such as Action painting, Pop Art, Pointillism, geometrical abstraction and psychedelic art. Including images from ancient Greek sculpture to modern cinema, Tuna Fishing depicts violent struggle between men and large fishes as a personification of the limited universe. The painting is dedicated to Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier, a 19th century French painter known for his depictions of battle scenes. Dali considered Tuna Fishing to be his most ambitious work and it is considered by his fans a testament to the mastery he had acquired in his profession during his career.
#2 Swans Reflecting Elephants
Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937)
| Spanish Title: | Cisnes que se reflejan como elefantes |
| Location: | Private Collection |
| Year: | 1937 |
Double images were a major part of Dali’s paranoiac-critical method. Like in Metamorphosis of Narcissus, this painting uses the reflection in a lake to create a double image. The three swans in front of the trees are reflected in the lake so that their necks become the elephants’ trunks and the trees become the legs of the elephants. The landscape contrasts with the stillness of the lake as Dali has used swirl-like images to depict the background cliffs and skies. Swans Reflecting Elephants is considered a landmark painting in Surrealism as it enhanced the popularity of the double-image style. It is the most famous double image created by Salvador Dali; his greatest masterpiece using the paranoiac-critical method; and one of the most well-known works in Surrealism.
The Dalí Theatre-Museum
Over the next 15 years, Dalí painted a series of 19 large canvases that included scientific, historical or religious themes. He often called this period «Nuclear Mysticism.» During this time, his artwork took on a technical brilliance combining meticulous detail with fantastic and limitless imagination. He would incorporate optical illusions, holography and geometry within his paintings. Much of his work contained images depicting divine geometry, the DNA, the Hyper Cube and religious themes of Chastity.
From 1960 to 1974, Dalí dedicated much of his time to creating the Teatro-Museo Dalí (Dalí Theatre-Museum) in Figueres. The museum’s building had formerly housed the Municipal Theatre of Figueres, where Dalí saw his public exhibition at the age of 14 (the original 19th century structure had been destroyed near the end of the Spanish Civil War). Located across the street from the Teatro-Museo Dalí is the Church of Sant Pere, where Dalí was baptized and received his first communion (his funeral would later be held there as well), and just three blocks away is the house where he was born.
The Teatro-Museo Dalí officially opened in 1974. The new building was formed from the ruins of the old and based on one of Dalí’s designs, and is billed as the world’s largest Surrealist structure, containing a series of spaces that form a single artistic object where each element is an inextricable part of the whole. The site is also known for housing the broadest range of work by the artist, from his earliest artistic experiences to works that he created during the last years of this life. Several works on permanent display were created expressly for the museum.
Also in 1974, Dalí dissolved his business relationship with manager Peter Moore. As a result, all rights to his collection were sold without his permission by other business managers and he lost much of his wealth. Two wealthy American art collectors, A. Reynolds Morse and his wife, Eleanor, who had known Dalí since 1942, set up an organization called «Friends of Dalí» and a foundation to help boost the artist’s finances. The organization also established the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
#5 Christ of Saint John of the Cross
Christ of St John of the Cross (1951)
| Spanish Title: | Cristo de San Juan de la Cruz |
| Location: | Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland |
| Year: | 1951 |
This painting is known as Christ of Saint John of the Cross because its design is based on a drawing by the 16th-century Spanish friar John of the Cross. The composition consists of a triangle, which is formed by the arms of Christ and the horizontal of the cross; and a circle, which is formed by the head of Christ. The triangle might be seen as a reference to the Holy Trinity while the circle may represent unity, that is all things exist in the three. Although the painting is a representation of crucifixion, it is devoid of nails and blood. According to Dali, the inspiration of the painting came to him through a cosmic dream, in which he was convinced that depiction of nails and blood would mar his portrayal of Christ. Christ of Saint John of the Cross was voted Scotland’s favorite painting in a 2006 poll and it is considered by many to be the greatest religious painting of the twentieth century.
#3 Soft Construction with Boiled Beans
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (1936)
| Spanish Title: | Construcción blanda con judías hervidas |
| Full Title: | Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) |
| Location: | Philadelphia Museum of Art, U.S. |
| Year: | 1936 |
Salvador Dali painted this masterpiece six months before the Spanish Civil War began. He claimed to have been aware of the war due to “the prophetic power of his subconscious mind”. The painting reflects his anxiety during the time and predicts the horror and violence in the war. It portrays two bodies, one darker than the other, in a gruesome fight where neither appears to be a victor. The monstrous creature is self-destructive just as a civil war is. Dali made sure the painting looked very realistic despite the fantastical creature it depicts. The boiled beans in the painting, which are also mentioned in the title, are perhaps a reference to the simple stew that was eaten by the poor citizens living through a difficult time in Spain. Soft Construction with Boiled Beans is considered one of Dali’s greatest masterpieces and is renowned for brilliant use of surrealism to depict the horrors of war.
#6 Metamorphosis of Narcissus
Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937)
| Spanish Title: | La metamorfosis de Narciso |
| Location: | Tate Modern, London, U.K. |
| Year: | 1937 |
The paranoiac-critical method is a technique in Surrealism which was developed by Salvador Dali in the early 1930s. It is used by the artist to tap into his subconscious through systematic irrational thought and a self-induced paranoid state. Considered one of the main achievements of surrealism, Dali used it in several of his paintings, especially those involving optical illusions and other multiple images. According to Greek mythology, Narcissus, who was renowned for his beauty, fell in love with his own reflection in water. Dali’s interpretation of the Greek myth, this painting shows Narcissus sitting in a pool, gazing down. Metamorphosis of Narcissus was created by Dali during his paranoiac-critical period and is among his most renowned works using the technique.
#8 Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee
The Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee (1944)
| Spanish Title: | Sueño Causado por el Vuelo de una Abeja |
| Full Title: | Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening |
| Location: | Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain |
| Year: | 1944 |
Salvador Dali said that this painting was intended “to express for the first time in images Freud’s discovery of the typical dream with a lengthy narrative, the consequence of the instantaneousness of a chance event which causes the sleeper to wake up.” It shows the sleeping figure of the artist’s wife Gala Dali floating above a rock. Beside her naked body, two drops of water, a pomegranate and a bee are also airborne. Gala’s dream is prompted by the buzzing of the bee and is portrayed in the upper half of the canvas. In a succession of images, a pomegranate bursts open to release a giant red fish from whose mouth two ferocious tigers emerge together with a bayonet which will soon wake Gala from her restful sleep. The elephant, later a recurring image in Dali’s works, is a distorted version of Elephant and Obelisk, a sculpture by famous Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Early Life
Dalí was born Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domenech on May 11, 1904, in Figueres, Spain, located 16 miles from the French border in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains. His father, Salvador Dalí y Cusi, was a middle-class lawyer and notary. Dalí’s father had a strict disciplinary approach to raising children—a style of child-rearing which contrasted sharply with that of his mother, Felipa Domenech Ferres. She often indulged young Dalí in his art and early eccentricities.
It has been said that young Dalí was a precocious and intelligent child, prone to fits of anger against his parents and schoolmates. Consequently, Dalí was subjected to furious acts of cruelty by more dominant students or his father. The elder Dalí wouldn’t tolerate his son’s outbursts or eccentricities and punished him severely. Their relationship deteriorated when Dalí was still young, exacerbated by competition between he and his father for Felipa’s affection.
Dalí had an older brother, born nine months before him, also named Salvador, who died of gastroenteritis. Later in his life, Dalí often related the story that when he was 5 years old, his parents took him to the grave of his older brother and told him he was his brother’s reincarnation. In the metaphysical prose he frequently used, Dalí recalled, » resembled each other like two drops of water, but we had different reflections.» He «was probably a first version of myself, but conceived too much in the absolute.»
Dalí, along with his younger sister Ana Maria and his parents, often spent time at their summer home in the coastal village of Cadaques. At an early age, Dalí was producing highly sophisticated drawings, and both of his parents strongly supported his artistic talent. It was here that his parents built him an art studio before he entered art school.
Upon recognizing his immense talent, Dalí’s parents sent him to drawing school at the Colegio de Hermanos Maristas and the Instituto in Figueres, Spain, in 1916. He was not a serious student, preferring to daydream in class and stand out as the class eccentric, wearing odd clothing and long hair. After that first year at art school, he discovered modern painting in Cadaques while vacationing with his family. There, he also met Ramon Pichot, a local artist who frequently visited Paris. The following year, his father organized an exhibition of Dalí’s charcoal drawings in the family home. By 1919, the young artist had his first public exhibition, at the Municipal Theatre of Figueres.
In 1921, Dalí’s mother, Felipa, died of breast cancer. Dalí was 16 years old at the time and was devastated by the loss. His father married his deceased wife’s sister, which did not endear the younger Dalí any closer to his father, though he respected his aunt. Father and son would battle over many different issues throughout their lives, until the elder Dalí’s death.
#4 The Great Masturbator
The Great Masturbator (1929)
| Spanish Title: | El gran masturbador |
| Location: | MNCARS, Madrid, Spain |
| Year: | 1929 |
In 1929, Salvador Dali met Gala, who became his muse and later his wife. This canvas was created in the same year and is thought to reflect the erotic transformation that the artist underwent due to her arrival in his life. The main yellow area in the painting represents the artist himself sleeping. Out of his head comes the vision, probably representing an erotic fantasy, of a nude female figure, resembling his muse, drawn to the genitalia of a man, presumably the artist. Seen by many as a bizarre self-portrait, the disturbing composition is further plagued by additions like the fish-hook, the bleeding cuts, ants crawling on his face and a grasshopper which has attached itself to his face. The Great Masturbator is renowned for glorifying something that is usually ridiculed and is among Dali’s most controversial paintings.
Final Years
In 1980, Dalí was forced to retire from painting due to a motor disorder that caused permanent trembling and weakness in his hands. No longer able to hold a paint brush, he’d lost the ability to express himself the way he knew best. More tragedy struck in 1982, when Dalí’s beloved wife and friend, Gala, died. The two events sent him into a deep depression. He moved to Pubol, in a castle that he had purchased and remodeled for Gala, possibly to hide from the public or, as some speculate, to die. In 1984, Dalí was severely burned in a fire. Due to his injuries, he was confined to wheelchair. Friends, patrons and fellow artists rescued him from the castle and returned him to Figueres, making him comfortable at the Teatro-Museo.
In November 1988, Dalí entered a hospital in Figueres with a failing heart. After a brief convalescence, he returned to the Teatro-Museo. On January 23, 1989, in the city of his birth, Dalí died of heart failure at the age of 84. His funeral was held at the Teatro-Museo, where he was buried in a crypt.
#7 Galatea of the Spheres
Galatea of the Spheres (1952)
| Spanish Title: | Galatea de las esferas |
| Location: | Dalí Theatre-Museum, Figueres, Catalonia, Spain |
| Year: | 1952 |
After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Salvador Dali became captivated with nuclear physics and the theories of disintegration of the atom. It was also a time when he had renewed interest in Catholicism. The led to his Nuclear Mysticism period, in which his works often used ideas from modern science as means of rationalizing the Christian religion. Realizing that matter was made up of atoms, Dali made his works appear to disintegrate into multiple atoms. This painting is a portrait of Gala Dali, his wife and muse. Her face is composed of densely populated spheres, representing atomic particles, which give a marvelous three dimensional effect to the canvas. Galatea in the title refers to a sea-nymph in Classical Mythology named Galatea, who was renowned for her virtue. Galatea of the Spheres is one of the most renowned paintings from Dali’s Nuclear Mysticism period.
The Layout of The Last Supper
Leonardo balanced the perspective construction of the Last Supper so that its vanishing point is immediately behind Christ’s right temple, pointing to the physical location of the center, or
sensus communis, of his brain. By pulling a string in radial directions from this point, he marked the table ends, floor lines, and orthogonal edges of the six ceiling coffer columns. From the
right and/or left edge of the horizon line, he drew diagonal lines up to the coffer corners, locating points for the horizontal lines of the 12 coffer rows.
Leonardo was well known for his love of symmetry. In his Last Supper, the layout is largely horizontal. The large table is seen in the foreground of the image with all of the figures behind it. The painting
is largely symmetrical with the same number of figures on either side of Jesus. The above diagram shows how the perspective the Last Super was worked out with a series of marks at key points highlighting the
architectural aspects of the composition and positioning of the figures.
#10 The Burning Giraffe
The Burning Giraffe (1937)
| Spanish Title: | Jirafa en llamas |
| Location: | Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland |
| Year: | 1937 |
The Burning Giraffe is seen as an expression of the personal struggle of Salvador Dali with the civil war going on in his home country. The painting depicts two feminine figures with undefined phallic shapes protruding from their backs. The hands, forearms and face of the nearest figure are stripped down to the muscular tissue beneath the skin. Prominently, there are opened drawers protruding from the left leg and chest of the figurine. Salvador Dali was a great admirer of famous neurologist Sigmund Freud and several paintings of Dali were influenced by Freudian theories. These open drawers can be traced to Freud’s psychoanalytical method and refer to the inner, subconscious within man. The burning giraffe image in the background was described by Dali as, “the masculine cosmic apocalyptic monster.” He believed it to be a premonition of war.
10 Facts You Might not Know about the Masterpiece
2. The secret of «The Last Supper»
The Last Supper is a very popular religious scene painted by many celebrated artists. Unlike artists before and after him, Leonardo da Vinci chose not to put halos on Jusus Christ. Many art historians believe that
Leonardo da Vinci believe in nature, not in God. To Leonardo, nature is God, so he treated every character in the fresco as common people.
3. «Last Supper» is a failed experiment.
Unlike traditional frescoes, which Renaissance masters painted on wet plaster walls, Leonardo experimented with tempura paint on a dry, sealed plaster wall in the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery in Milan, Italy.
The experiment proved unsuccessful, however, because the paint did not adhere properly and began to flake away only a few decades after the work was finished.
4. The spilled salt is symbolic.
Speculations about symbolism in the artwork are plentiful. For example, many scholars have discussed the meaning of the spilled salt container near Judas’s elbow. Spilled salt could symbolize bad luck, loss, religion,
or Jesus as salt of the earth.
5. Eel or herring?
Scholars have also remarked on da Vinci’s choice of food. They dispute whether the fish on the table is herring or eel since each carries its own symbolic meaning. In Italian, the word for eel is «aringa.» The similar word,
«arringa,» means to indoctrinate. In northern Italian dialect, the word for herring is «renga,» which also describes someone who denies religion. This would fit with Jesus’ biblical prediction that his apostle Peter would deny knowing him.
6. Da Vinci used a hammer and nail to help him to achieve the one-point perspective.
What makes the masterpiece so striking is the perspective from which it’s painted, which seems to invite the viewer to step right into the dramatic scene. To achieve this illusion, da Vinci hammered a nail into the wall, then
tied string to it to make marks that helped guide his hand in creating the painting’s angles.
7. The existing mural is not 100% da Vinci’s work.
At the end of the 20th century, restorer Panin Brambilla Barcilon and his crew relied on microscopic photographs, core samples, infrared reflectoscopy and sonar to remove the added layers of paint and restore the original as accurately
as possible. Critics maintain that only a fraction of the painting that exists today is the work of Leonardo da Vinci.
8. Three early copies of the original exist.
Three of da Vinci’s students, including Giampietrino, made copies of his painting early in the 16th century. Giampietrino did a full-scale copy that is now in London’s Royal Academy of Arts. This oil painting on canvas was the primary
resource for the latest restoration of the work. The second copy by Andrea Solari is in the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Belgium while the third copy by Cesare da Sesto is in the Church of Saint Ambrogio in Switzerland.
9. The painting is also a musical score.
According to Italian musician Giovanni Maria Pala, da Vinci incorporated musical notes in «The Last Supper.» In 2007, Pala created a 40-second melody from the notes that were allegedly hidden in the scene.
10. The painting has been a victim of neglect and abuse.
In 1652, monastery residents cut a new door in the wall of the deteriorating painting, which removed a chunk of the artwork showing the feet of Jesus. Late in the 18th century, Napoleon Bonaparte’s soldiers turned the area into a stable
and further damaged the wall with projectiles. During World War II, the Nazis bombed the monastery, reducing surrounding walls to rubble.