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D
Dalí i Domènech, Salvador
(1904-
1989)
Spanish painter
Born in C
ATALONIA
and educated in B
ARCE
-
LONA
and M
ADRID
, Dalí went to Paris in the
mid-1920s where he met fellow Catalan
artists P
ABLO
P
ICASSO
and J
OAN
M
IRÓ
. He
soon abandoned his earlier representational
art inspired by various painters, both classi-
cal and contemporary. Instead, he turned to
surrealism, under the particular influence
of Sigmund Freud's writings on dreams and
sexual symbolism. He proclaimed his dedi-
cation to the “paranoic critical” technique
that enabled him to look within the inner
meanings of images. This enabled him to
create a dream landscape such as that of
The
Persistence of Memory
(1931) with its melting
watches, each set to a different time and
displayed in a harsh landscape resembling
that of Dalí's Catalan childhood. He gained
further approval from the surrealists
through his collaboration with the Spanish
director L
UIS
B
UÑUEL
on two films,
Un chien
andalou
(An Andalusian dog, 1928) and
l'Âge d'or
(The golden age, 1930). The mix-
ture of the grotesque and even repulsive
with startling perceptiveness won further
plaudits from the dominant school of mod-
ern art.
During the late 1930s Dalí underwent a
rapid fall from the heights of esteem to
which he had been raised. This was due to
a number of factors: his increasing empha-
sis on sexual and violent themes (which
had offended the puritanical morality of the
doctrinaire Left), his flamboyant egotism,
and jealousy of his ability to attain interna-
tional notoriety through self-promotion. He
Salvador Dalí
(Library of Congress)
164
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