Bondar Andrey

8 “V”

Salvador Dali and his art

Project leader: Ivanova Natalia Vladimirovna

Content

Introducing        

Early life        

Madrid and Paris        

1929 through World War II        

Later years in Catalonia        

Dali Theatre and Museum        

Own impression        

Conclusion        

Introducing

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech, 1st Marquis of Pubol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989) was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres.

I have chosen this theme because last summer I was in Spain and visited Dali’s places such as the Theatre Museum in Figures and the castle in Pubol. This was very interesting excursion and so I decided to tell you about Dali and all his life

Salvador Dali was an eccentric Spanish painter that understood how the media worked and used it to its full potential. Dali's name is synonymous with the Surrealist art movement. Dali was a prolific artist, creating more than 1500 paintings during his life time and many works in other mediums, including prints, drawings, sculpture, book illustration, and theater set designs. 

Dali had two museums dedicated to his life and work while he was still living. His works continue to fetch increasingly high prices in art auction houses throughout the world today.

Dali was highly imaginative, and also had an affinity for partaking in unusual and grandiose behavior, in order to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more public attention than his artwork.

Salvidor Dali died in 1989, gone but not forgotten. his name still remains in headlines and he is known to be the greatest artist of the surrealist art movement,. He died in his museum, in which he lived up above in a tower. Salvidor will go down in history. He is a legend in my eyes.

Early life

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech, was born on May 11, 1904, at 8:45 in the town of Figueres, Spain.  Nine months before Dali was born, his brother (also Salvador), died.  His parents believed that Dali was the reincarnation of his deceased brother; therefore he was given the same name.  Dali learned of this at the age of five.  When he was five, Dali was taken to his brother's grave and told by his parents that he was his brother's reincarnation,  a concept which he came to believe. Of his brother, Dali said, "…[we] 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."

Dali also had a sister, Ana María, who was three years younger. In 1949, she published a book about her brother, Dali As Seen By His Sister where she had broken all the legends about Dali which he was creating for many years. Because of this book they quarreled and Dali has never forgiven her.

His talent as an artist showed at an early age and Salvador Dali received his first drawing lessons when he was ten years old. In 1916 Dali also discovered modern painting on a summer vacation to Cadaques with the family of Ramon Pichot, a local artist who made regular trips to Paris The next year, Dali's father organized an exhibition of his charcoal drawings in their family home. He had his first public exhibition at the Municipal Theater in Figueres in 1919.

In February 1921, Dali's mother died of breast cancer. Dali was sixteen years old; he later said his mother's death "was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped her… I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul." After her death, Dali's father married his deceased wife's sister. Dali did not resent this marriage, because he had a great love and respect for his aunt.

Madrid and Paris

In 1922, Dali moved into the Academy of Bellas Artes in Madrid, where he began to develop his artistic style. Lean and tall, Dali began to wear his hair long and grew sideburns and wore a coat, stockings and breeches. This drew a lot of attention from people towards him. This was perhaps the beginning of his eccentricities which were to gain him a lot of attention in his future.  Dali  learned from many talented people during his time at the Academy

At the Residencia, he became close friends with (among others) Pepín Bello, Luis Buñuel, and Federico García Lorca. The friendship with Lorca had a strong element of mutual passion, but Dali rejected the erotic advances of the poet.

However, it was his paintings, in which he experimented with Cubism, that earned him the most attention from his fellow students. At the time of these early works, Dali probably did not completely understand the Cubist movement. His only information on Cubist art came from magazine articles and a catalog given to him by Pichot, since there were no Cubist artists in Madrid at the time. In 1924, the still-unknown Salvador Dali illustrated a book for the first time. It was a publication of the Catalan poem "Les bruixes de Llers" ("The Witches of Llers") by his friend and schoolmate, poet Carles Fages de Climent. Dali also experimented with Dada, which influenced his work throughout his life.

Dali was expelled from the Academia in 1926, shortly before his final exams, when he stated that no one on the faculty was competent enough to examine him. His mastery of painting skills was evidenced by his flawlessly realistic Basket of Bread, painted in 1926.] That same year, he made his first visit to Paris, where he met with Pablo Picasso, whom the young Dali revered. Picasso had already heard favorable reports about Dali from. As he developed his own style over the next few years, Dali made a number of works heavily influenced by Picasso and Miro.

Some trends in Dali's work that would continue throughout his life were already evident in the 1920s. Dali devoured influences from many styles of art, ranging from the most academically classic to the most cutting-edge avantgarde His classical influences included Raphael, Bronzino,

Vermeer, and Velázquez. He used both classical and modernist techniques, sometimes in separate works, and sometimes combined. Exhibitions of his works in Barcelona attracted much attention along with mixtures of praise and puzzled debate from critics.

Dali grew a flamboyant moustache, influenced by seventeenth-century Spanish master painter Diego Velázquez. The moustache became an iconic trademark of his appearance for the rest of his life.

1929 through World War II

In 1929, Dali collaborated with surrealist film director Luis Buñuel on the short film Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog). His main contribution was to help Buñuel write the script for the film. Dali later claimed to have also played a significant role in the filming of the project, but this is not substantiated by contemporary accounts.

Also, in August 1929, Dali met his muse, inspiration, and future wife Gala, born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. She was a Russian immigrant eleven years his senior, who at that time was married to surrealist poet Paul Eluard. Gala decided to stay with Dali. She became his companion, his muse, his sexual partner, his model in numerous art works and his business manager. For him she was everything. Most of all Gala was a stabilizing factor in his life. Dali and Gala, having lived together since 1929, were married in 1934 in a civil ceremony.

In the same year, Dali had important professional exhibitions and officially joined the Surrealist group in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris. His work had already been heavily influenced by surrealism for two years.

Meanwhile, Dali's relationship with his father was close to rupture. Don Salvador Dali y Cusi strongly disapproved of his son's romance with Gala, and saw his connection to the Surrealists as a bad influence on his morals. The last straw was when Don Salvador read in a Barcelona newspaper that his son had recently exhibited in Paris a drawing of the "Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ", with a provocative inscription, "Sometimes, I spit for fun on my mother's portrait”His father told him that he would disinherit him, and that he should never set foot in Cadaques again.

In 1931, Dali painted one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory. which introduced a surrealistic image of soft, melting pocket watches. The general interpretation of the work is that the soft watches are a rejection of the assumption that time is rigid or deterministic. This idea is supported by other images in the work, such as the wide expanding landscape, and the other limp watches, shown being devoured by insects.

Three years later, Dali made his first visit to the United States.  His work was very well received, but the Americans also quickly learned about Dali’s eccentric personality.  After an exhibition held in New York received much attention and praise, a ball was hosted in Dali’s honor.  He came to the ball with a crystal box around his neck, containing a brassiere.  Later that year, Dali and Gala (now divorced from her first husband), attended a costume party, dressed as the Lindbergh baby and his kidnapper.  This became a huge scandal in the press, so huge that Dali gave a public apology.  When he returned from the United States, he had to explain to his fellow surrealists the reason for apologizing for a surrealist act. 

Dali’s explanation was not sufficient, and at the end of that same year, a surrealist trial was held and Dali was expelled from the movement.  His reply was, “I am surrealism”.  From this point on, the surrealists spoke about Dali in extremely negative ways, and some spoke of him in the past tense, signifying that he was dead to them.

In 1941, Dali and Gala went to live in the United States for eight years because of the beginning of the Second World War. During this time, Dali wrote his autobiography, titled “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali”. Their return to Spain was during the reign of Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator, and Dali was highly criticized for this choice. Despite the criticism, Dali corresponded with Franco himself, and also painted a portrait of Franco’s granddaughter. No one actually knows if his actions were sincere.

In 1941, Dali drafted a film scenario for Jean Gabin called Moontide. In 1942, he published his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. He wrote catalogs for his exhibitions, such as that at the Knoedler

In 1948 Dali and Gala returned to Europe, spending most of their time either in their residence in Lligat/Spain or in Paris/France or in New York. Dali developed a lively interest in science, religion and history. He integrated things into his art that he had picked up from popular science magazines. Another source of inspiration was the great classical masters of painting like Raphael, Velasquez or the French painter Ingres. The artist commented his shift in style with the words: "To be a surrealist forever is like spending your life painting nothing but eyes and noses."

In 1958 the artist began his series of large sized history paintings. He painted one monumental painting every year during the summer months in Lligat. The most famous one, The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, can be seen at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg in Florida. It is breath-taking. The artist's late art works combine more than ever his perfect and meticulous painting technique with his fantastic and limitless imaginations.

Later years in Catalonia

Beginning in 1960, Dali’s next big project was his personal construction of the Dali Museum in his birthplace, Figueres, Spain. For 14 years, Dali constructed and filled the museum with paintings, sculptures, photographs and other works of art. Dali health began to worsen in 1980 when he and Gala drank a mixture of prescription medication. At this point, Gala had started to show signs of senility. The probable suicide attempt did not work, although it did damage Dali’s nervous system, making it almost impossible for him to continue to create art. The trembling of his hands suggested the first signs of Parkinson’s disease. Two years later, Gala died and Dali began to lose his will to live. He dehydrated himself in what many think was another suicide attempt, but Dali claimed it was a method of entering into a suspended state of animation. In 1984, there was a fire in his bedroom, an occurrence that once again fueled speculation that Dali was attempting suicide. In 1988, Dali suffered from a heart attack, and finally after many years of suffering, Dali died the following year at the age of 84.

"Dali is immortal and will not die."

Although Dali was most known for his paintings, of which there are 1,500, Dali himself said that painting was only a fraction of himself. His talent was used in many different areas throughout his life. Federico Garcia Lorca used Dali’s talent and imagination in his famous play ”Mariana Pineda”. For the play, Dali had designed scenes and costumes. Dali also worked with Walt Disney on the animation of the movie “Destino”, which was finally released in 2003. Dali’s immense talent also led him to collaborate with Alfred Hitchcock on the dream sequence from “Spellbound”, with Christian Dior in the fashion world, and also on the Chupa Chup lollipop logo.

"To buy my paintings you have to be criminally rich like the North Americans."

"The only difference between a crazy person and myself, is that the crazy person believes they are sane.  I know that I'm crazy."

Dali Theatre and Museum

The Dali Theatre and Museum, is a museum of the artist Salvador Dali in his home town of Figueres, in Catalonia.

In 1960, Dali began work on the Dali Theatre and Museum in his home town of Figueres; it was his largest single project and the main focus of his energy through 1974. He continued to make additions through the mid-1980s.

The heart of the museum was the building that housed the town's theatre when Dali was a child, and where one of the first public exhibitions of young Dali's art was shown. The old theater was bombed in the Spanish Civil War and remained in a state of ruin for decades until Dali and the mayor of Figueres decided to rebuild it as a museum dedicated to the town's most famous son in 1960. The museum also occupies buildings and courtyards adjacent to the old theater building.

The museum opened in 1974, with continuing expansions through the mid-1980s. It houses the single largest and most diverse collection of works by Salvador Dali, the heart of which was from the artist's own collection. In addition to Dali paintings from all decades of his career, there are Dali sculptures, 3-dimensional collages, mechanical devices, a living-room with custom furniture that looks like the face of Mae West when viewed from a certain spot, and other curiosities from Dali's imagination.

The museum also houses a small selection of works by other artists collected by Dali, ranging from El Greco to Marcel Duchamp, and a gallery devoted to the work of Dali's friend and fellow Catalan artist Antoni Pitxot, who became director of the museum after Dali's death.

Dali is buried in a crypt in the Teatre-Museum basement.

Some of the most important exhibited works are Port Alguer (1924), L'espectre del sex-appeal (1932), Autoretrat tou amb bacon fregit (1941), Poesia d'America-Els atletes cosmics (1943), Galarina (1944-45), La panera del pa (1945), Leda atomica (1949), Galatea de les esferes (1952) and Crist de la Tramuntana (1968). There is also a set of works carried out by the artist expressly for the Theater-Museum, like the room Mae West, the room Palau del Vent, the Monument to Francesc Pujols, and the Cadillac plujos.

He made a lot of works in his life and most of them were sold so now we can see only few originals. I want to show you some most popular Dali works.

. First is Dali Atomicus

. This photo was made 1941 so computers didn’t existed. This photo was making for 3 hours throwing cats chairs and water to try to catch the moment.

Another famous work is The Persistence of Memory where you can see famous Dali processed clocks

One more work made in 1944 was “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening”.

Great Masturbator was made when Gala has gone back to France

Own impression

When I was in Catalonia I visited some of this places connected with Dali such as Castle in Pubol and Theatre museum of Dali. And I think that his life was full of interesting things and all his life he was trying to be more scandalous mainly because of his dead brother.

Conclusion

Dali made a lot of famous works but he has most famous work which he was doing all his life: Salvador’s life – he was one of the most scandalous and interesting man in XX century and he changed meaning of art for this time

Information Source

Wikipedia.org