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2 Dalí's Politics 3 Chronology of Notable Works by Salvador Dalí 4 Quotations 5 External links |
Dalí was born 08:45 a.m. May 11, 1904, at number 20 Monturiolin street in the town of Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, the son of comfortable middle-class notary Salvador Dalí i Cusí. Dalí attended Municipal Drawing School, where he first received formal art training. In 1916 Dalí 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 Dalí'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 1921 his mother died of cancer, and his father married his aunt, which the younger Salvador somewhat resented.
In 1922 Dalí moved to Madrid, where he studied at the Academy of Arts (Academia de San Fernando). Dalí already drew attention as an eccentric, wearing long hair and sideburns, coat, stockings and knee britches in the fashion style of a century earlier. What got him the most attention from his fellow students were his paintings where he experimented with Cubism (even though in these earliest Cubist works he arguably did not completely understand the movement, for his only information on Cubist art came from a few magazine articles and a catalogue given to him by Pichot, since there were no Cubist artists in Madrid at the time).
Dalí also experimented with Dadaism, which arguably influnced his work throughout his life. He became close friends with poet Federico García Lorca and with Luis Buñuel at this time; he would later become Lorca's lover. Dalí was expelled from the Academy in 1926 shortly before his final exams when he stated that no one on the faculty was competent enough to examine him.
That same year he made his first visit to Paris, where he met with Pablo Picasso, whom young Dalí revered; the older artist had already heard favorable things about Dalí from Joan Miró. Dalí did a number of works heavily influenced by Picasso and Miró for the next few years, as he groped towards developing his own style. Some trends in Dalí's work that would continue throughout his life were already evident in the 1920s, however: Dalí omnivorously devoured influences of all styles of art he could find and then produced works ranging from the most academic classicism to the most cutting edge avante garde, sometimes in separate works, and sometimes combined. Exhibitions of his works in Barcelona attracted much attention, and mixtures of praise and puzzled debate from critics.
1929 was an important year for Dalí. He collaborated with Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel on the short film Un Chien Andalou and met his muse and future wife, Gala Eluard, born Helena Deluvina Diakinoff, a Russian immigrant eleven years his senior who was then married to the surrealist poet Paul Eluard. In the same year, Dalí had important professional exhibitions and officially joined the Surrealist group in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris (although his work had already been heavily influenced by Surrealism for 2 years).
In 1934 Dalí and Gala, having lived together since 1929, were married in a civil ceremony.
Upon Francisco Franco's coming to power in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Dalí came into conflict with his fellow Surrealists over political beliefs. As such Dali was officially expelled from the predominantly Marxist Surrealist group. Dalí response to his expulsion was "Surrealism is me." Breton coined the anagram "Avida Dollars," by which he referred to the Dalí after the period of his expulsion; the Surrealists henceforth would speak of Dalí in the past tense, as if he were dead. The surrealist movement and various members (such as Ted Joans) thereof would continue to issue extremely harsh polemics against Dalí until the time of his death and beyond.
As war started in Europe, Dalí and Gala moved to the United States in 1940, where they lived for eight years. In 1942 he published his entertaining autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí.
He spent his remaining years back in his beloved Catalonia. The fact that he chose to live in Spain while it was ruled by Franco drew criticism from progressives and many other artists.
Some think that the common dismissal of Dalí's later works has more to do with politics than the actual merits of the works themselves.
In 1958, Dalí and Gala were re-married in a Roman Catholic ceremony. Gala died on June 10, 1982.
In Dalí's later years, young artists like Andy Warhol proclaimed Dalí an important influence on pop art.
In 1960 Dalí began work on the Teatro-Museo Gala Salvador Dalí 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.
After Gala's death in 1982, Dalí lost much of his will to live. He deliberately dehydrated himself--possibly as a suicide attempt, possibly in an attempt to put himself into a state of suspended animation, as he had read that some microscopic animals could do.
He moved from Figueres to the castle in Pubol which he had bought for Gala and was the site of her death. In 1984 a fire broke out in his bedroom under unclear circumstances--possibly a suicide attempt by Dalí, possibly a murder attempt by a greedy caretaker, possibly simple negligence by his staff-- but in any case Dalí was rescued and returned to Figueres where a group of his friends, patrons, and fellow artists saw to it that he was comfortable living in his Theater-Museum for his final years.
Salvador Dalí died of heart failure on January 23, 1989 at Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. He is buried in the crypt of his Teatro Museo in Figueres.
Dalí has sometimes been portrayed as a Fascist, especially by his enemies in surrealist groups. The reality may be somewhat more complex, although perhaps no more flattering to Dalí.
In his youth Dalí embraced for a time anarchism and communism. His writings account various anecdotes of making radical political statements more to shock listeners than from any deep conviction. When he fell into the circle of mostly Marxist surrealists who denounced as enemies the monarchists on one hand and the anarchists on the other, Dalí explained to them that he personally was an anarcho-monarchist.
With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War Dalí fled from fighting and refused to align himself with any group.
Dalí became closer to the Franco regime after his return to Catalonia after World War II. Some of Dalí's statements supported the repression of Franco's Fascist regeme, congratulating Franco for his actions aimed "at clearing Spain of destructive forces". Dalí sent telegrams to Franco, praising him for signing death warrants for political prisoners. Dalí even painted a portrait of Franco's daughter. Dalí's eccentricities were tolerated by the Franco regeme. One of Dalí's few possible bits of open disobedience was his continued praise of García Lorca even in the years when his works were banned.
Dalí seemed to have little empathy for humanity in general. Perhaps Dalí's most honest statement of his political philosophy was when he said that he did not care about others so long as he himself could be king. Looked at through purely selfish motives, Dalí's shifting ideolgies gain a sort of consistancy. When Dalí was poor and obscure he advocated violent overthrow of all governmental and social institutions; later in life he was content with the Franco dictatorship since Dalí himself was rich and famous.
Biography
Dalí's Politics
Chronology of Notable Works by Salvador Dalí
Dalí produced over 1,500 paintings in his career, in addition to producing illustrations for books, lithographs, designs for theater sets and costumes, a great number of drawings, dozens of sculptures, and various other projects. Below is a chronological sample of important and representative work.
The two largest collections of Dalí's work are the Salvador Dalí museum in St. Petersburg, Florida and the Teatro Museo Gala Salvador Dalí in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain.Quotations