In what city was Salvador Dali born? Salvador Dali - biography, information, personal life

26.04.2019

Notable works: Influence: Works on Wikimedia Commons

Salvador Dali(full name Salvador Domenech Felip Jacinth Dali and Domenech, Marquis de Pubol, cat. Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí de Púbol, Spanish Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí y de Púbol ; May 11 - January 23) - Spanish painter, graphic artist, sculptor, director, writer. One of the most famous representatives surrealism.

Familiarity with new trends in painting develops - Dali experiments with the methods of Cubism and Dadaism. In the city he is expelled from the Academy for his arrogant and disdainful attitude towards teachers. In the same year he goes to Paris for the first time, where he meets Pablo Picasso. Trying to find his own style, in the late 1920s he created a number of works influenced by Picasso and Joan Miró. In the city he participates with Buñuel in the creation of the surreal film “Un Chien Andalou”.

Then he first meets his future wife Gala (Elena Dmitrievna Dyakonova), who was then the wife of the poet Paul Eluard. Having become close to Salvador, Gala, however, continued to meet with her husband and started relationships with other poets and artists, which at that time seemed acceptable in those bohemian circles where Dali, Eluard and Gala moved. Realizing that he actually stole his friend’s wife, Salvador paints his portrait as “compensation.”

Youth

Dali's works are shown at exhibitions, he is gaining popularity. In 1929 he joined the group of surrealists organized by Andre Breton. At the same time, there is a break with his father. The hostility of the artist’s family towards Gala, the associated conflicts, scandals, as well as the inscription made by Dali on one of the canvases - “Sometimes I spit with pleasure on the portrait of my mother” - led to the fact that the father cursed his son and kicked him out of the house. The provocative, shocking and seemingly terrible actions of the artist were not always worth understanding literally and seriously: he probably did not want to offend his mother and did not even imagine what this would lead to, perhaps he longed to experience a series of feelings and experiences that he stimulated in such a blasphemous, at first glance, act. But the father, upset by the long-ago death of his wife, whom he loved and whose memory he carefully preserved, could not stand his son’s antics, which became the last straw for him. In retaliation, the indignant Salvador Dali sent his sperm to his father in an envelope with an angry letter: “This is all I owe you.” Later, in the book “The Diary of a Genius,” the artist, already an elderly man, speaks well of his father, admits that he loved him very much and endured the suffering caused by his son.

Break with the surrealists

After Caudillo Franco came to power in 1936, Dalí quarreled with the surrealists on the left and was expelled from the group. In response, Dali, not without reason, declares: “Surrealism is me.” Salvador was practically apolitical, and even his monarchist views should be understood surrealistically, that is, not seriously, as well as his constantly advertised sexual passion for Hitler. He lived surrealistically, his statements and works had a broader and deeper meaning than the interests of specific political parties. So, in 1933, he painted the picture The Riddle of William Tell, where he depicts Lenin in the image with a huge buttock. Dali reinterpreted the Swiss myth according to Freud: Tell became a cruel father who wants to kill his child. Personal memories of Dali, who broke with his father, were layered. Lenin was perceived by communist-minded surrealists as a spiritual, ideological father. The painting depicts dissatisfaction with an overbearing parent, a step towards the formation of a mature personality. But the surrealists took the drawing literally, as a caricature of Lenin, and some of them even tried to destroy the canvas.

The evolution of creativity. Departure from surrealism

In 1937, the artist visited Italy and was delighted with the works of the Renaissance. The correctness of human proportions and other features of academicism begin to dominate in his own works. Despite the departure from surrealism, his paintings are still filled with surrealist fantasies. Later, Dali (in the best traditions of his conceit and shockingness) credits himself with saving art from modernist degradation, with which he associates his given name(“Salvador” means “Savior” in Spanish).

Dali in the USA

With the outbreak of the Second World War, Dali and Gala left for the United States, where they lived from 2000 to 2000. In 2010, he published a fictionalized autobiography, “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.” His literary experiments, like his works of art, usually turn out to be commercially successful. He collaborates with Walt Disney. He invites Dali to test his talent in cinema - an art that at that time was surrounded by an aura of magic, miracles and wide possibilities. But the surreal cartoon project Destino, proposed by Salvador, was considered commercially unfeasible, and work on it was stopped. Dali works with director Alfred Hitchcock and paints the scenery for the dream scene from the film Spellbound. However, the scene was included in the film very truncated - again for commercial reasons.

Middle and old years

After returning to Spain, he lives mainly in his beloved Catalonia. In 1965 he came to Paris and again, as almost 40 years ago, conquered it with his works, exhibitions and shocking actions. He makes whimsical short films and takes surreal photographs. In his films, he mainly uses reverse viewing effects, but skillfully selected shooting objects (flowing water, a ball bouncing down the steps), interesting comments, and a mysterious atmosphere created by the artist’s acting make the films unusual examples of art house. Dali appears in commercials, and even in such commercial activities he does not miss the opportunity for self-expression. TV viewers will long remember a chocolate advertisement in which the artist takes a bite of a piece of a bar, after which his mustache twirls in euphoric delight and he exclaims that he has gone crazy from this chocolate.

His relationship with Gala is quite complicated. On the one hand, from the very beginning of their relationship, she promoted him, found buyers for his paintings, convinced him to paint works that were more understandable to the mass audience (the change in his painting at the turn of the 20-30s was striking), shared with him the luxury, and need. When there was no order for paintings, Gala forced her husband to develop product brands and costumes: her strong, decisive nature was very necessary for the weak-willed artist. Gala was putting things in order in his studio, patiently putting away canvases, paints, and souvenirs that Dali had scattered senselessly while looking for the right thing. On the other hand, she constantly had relationships on the side, in later years the spouses often quarreled, Dali's love was rather a wild passion, and Gala's love was not devoid of calculation, with which she married a genius. In 1968, Dali bought a castle for Gala in the village of Pubol, in which she lived separately from her husband, and which he himself could visit only with the written permission of his wife. In 1981, Dali developed Parkinson's disease. Gala dies in the city.

Last years

After the death of his wife, Dali experiences deep depression. His paintings themselves are simplified, and for a long time they are dominated by the motif of grief (variations on the theme “Pietà”). Parkinson's disease also prevents Dali from painting. His most recent works (“Cockfights”) are simple squiggles in which the bodies of the characters are guessed - the last attempts at self-expression of an unfortunate sick person. It was difficult to care for a sick and distraught old man; he threw himself at the nurses with whatever came to hand, screamed, and bit. In 1984, there was a fire in the castle. The paralyzed old man rang the bell unsuccessfully, trying to call for help. In the end, he overcame his weakness, fell out of bed and crawled towards the exit, but lost consciousness at the door. He was taken to hospital with severe burns, but survived. Sick and frail, Dali died on January 23, 1989 from a heart attack. The only intelligible phrase he uttered during the years of illness was “My friend Lorca”: the artist recalled the years of his happy, healthy youth, when he was friends with the poet Federico García Lorca. Dali's body is walled up in the floor in one of the rooms of the Dali Theater-Museum in Figueres. The artist bequeathed to bury him so that people could walk around the grave.

Plaque on the wall in the room where Dali is buried

Some works

Self-Portrait with Raphael's Neck (1920-1921) This is one of Dali's first works. Made in an impressionist style.

Portrait of Luis Buñuel (1924) Like “Still Life” (1924) or “Puristic Still Life” (1924), this painting was created during Dali’s search for his manner and style of execution, and in its atmosphere it is reminiscent of De Chirico’s paintings.

Flesh on the Stones (1926) Dali called Picasso his second father. This canvas is made in a cubist manner unusual for El Salvador, like the previously painted “Cubist Self-Portrait” (1923). In addition, Dali also painted several portraits of Picasso.

The Gizmo and the Hand (1927) Experiments with geometric shapes continue. You can already feel that mystical desert, the manner of painting landscapes characteristic of Dali of the “surrealist” period, as well as some other artists (in particular, Yves Tanguy).

The Invisible Man (1929) Also called "Invisible", the painting shows metamorphosis, hidden meanings and contours of objects. Dali often returned to this technique, making it one of the main features of his painting. This applies to a number of later paintings, such as, for example, “Swans Reflected in Elephants” (1937) and “The Appearance of a Face and a Bowl of Fruit on the Seashore” (1938).

Enlightened Pleasures (1929) Reveals Dali's obsessions and childhood fears. He also uses images borrowed from his own “Portrait of Paul Eluard” (1929), “Riddles of Desire: “My Mother, My Mother, My Mother” (1929) and some others.

The Great Masturbator (1929) The painting, like Enlightened Pleasures, is a field for studying the artist’s personality.

William Tell (1930) Rethinking the role and essence of the Swiss folk hero, presenting him in the film as an overbearing father who, with his pressure, his “dictatorship,” fetters the development and personal maturation of his son. The father's phallus on display, the scissors in his hand, is an illustration of the Freudian idea of the castration complex that a son experiences, suppressed by the image of his father.

The Persistence of Memory (1931) One of the most famous works of Salvador Dali. Like many others, it uses ideas from previous works. In particular, this is a self-portrait and ants, a soft watch and the shore of Cadaqués, Dali’s birthplace.

Paranoid Transformations of Gala's Face (1932) It’s like a picture-instruction for Dali’s paranoiac-critical method.

Retrospective Bust of a Woman (1933) Surreal item. Despite the huge bread and cobs - symbols of fertility, Dali seems to emphasize the price at which all this is given: the woman’s face is full of ants eating her up.

The Mystery of William Tell (1933) One of Dali's outright mockeries of Andre Breton's communist love and his leftist views. Main character according to Dali himself, this is Lenin in a cap with a huge visor. In “The Diary of a Genius,” Dali writes that the baby is himself, screaming “He wants to eat me!” There are also crutches here - an indispensable attribute of Dali’s work, which retained its relevance throughout the artist’s life. With these two crutches the artist props up the visor and one of the leader’s thighs. This is not the only known work on this topic. Back in 1931, Dali wrote “Partial Hallucination. Six apparitions of Lenin on the piano."

Mae West's face (used as a surreal room) (1934-1935) The work was realized both on paper and in the form of a real room with furniture in the form of a lip-sofa and other things.

Woman with a Head of Roses (1935) The head of roses is more of a tribute to Arcimboldo, an artist beloved by the surrealists. Arcimboldo, long before the advent of the avant-garde as such, painted portraits of court men, using vegetables and fruits to compose them (eggplant nose, wheat hair, etc.). He (like Bosch) was something of a surrealist before surrealism.

The Pliable Structure with Boiled Beans: A Premonition of the Civil War (1936) Like Autumn Cannibalism, written the same year, this picture is the horror of a Spaniard who understands what is happening to his country and where it is heading. This painting is akin to “Guernica” by the Spaniard Pablo Picasso.

Venus de Milo with boxes (1936) The most famous Dalian item. The idea of boxes is also present in his paintings. This can be confirmed by “Giraffe on Fire” (1936-1937), “Anthropomorphic Locker” (1936) and other paintings.

Telephone - Lobster (1936) A so-called surrealistic object is an object that has lost its essence and traditional function. Most often it was intended to evoke resonance and new associations. Dali and Giacometti were the first to create what Salvador himself called “objects with a symbolic function.”

Sunshine Table (1936) and Poetry of America (1943) When advertising has become a part of everyone's life, Dali resorts to it to create a special effect, a kind of unobtrusive culture shock. In the first picture he casually drops a pack of CAMEL cigarettes onto the sand, and in the second he uses a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Metamorphoses of Narcissus (1936-1937) Or "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus". Deeply psychological work.

The Riddle of Hitler (1937) Dali himself spoke differently about Hitler. He wrote that he was attracted to the Fuhrer’s soft, plump back. His mania did not cause much enthusiasm among the surrealists, who had leftist sympathies. On the other hand, Dali subsequently spoke of Hitler as a complete masochist who started the war with only one goal - to lose it. According to the artist, he was once asked for an autograph for Hitler and he made a straight cross - “the complete opposite of the broken fascist swastika.”

Slave Market with the Appearance of Voltaire's Invisible Bust (1938) One of Dali's most famous "optical" paintings, in which he skillfully plays with color associations and angles of view. Another extremely famous work of this kind is “Gala, looking at the Mediterranean Sea, at a distance of twenty meters turns into a portrait of Abraham Lincoln” (1976).

A dream caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate a second before awakening (1944) This bright picture has a feeling of lightness and instability of what is happening. In the background is a long-legged elephant. This character appears in other works, such as The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946).

Naked Dali, contemplating five ordered bodies, turning into corpuscles, from which Leonardo’s Leda is unexpectedly created, fertilized by the face of Gala (1950) One of many paintings dating back to the period of Dali’s passion for physics. He breaks images, objects and faces into spherical corpuscles or some kind of rhinoceros horns (another obsession demonstrated in the diary entries). And if an example of the first technique is “Galatea with Spheres” (1952) or this painting, then the second is based on “The Explosion of Raphael’s Head” (1951).

Crucifixion or Hypercubic Body (1954) Corpus hypercubus - a painting depicting the crucifixion of Christ. Dali turns to religion (as well as mythology, as exemplified by “The Colossus of Rhodes” (1954)) and writes biblical stories in his own way, introducing a considerable amount of mysticism into the paintings. The wife Gala is now becoming an indispensable character in “religious” paintings. However, Dali does not limit himself and allows himself to write quite provocative things. Such as "The Sodom Self-Pleasure of the Innocent Maiden" (1954).

Last Supper (1955) The most famous painting, showing one of the biblical scenes. Many researchers still argue about the value of the so-called “religious” period in Dali’s work. The paintings “Our Lady of Guadalupe” (1959), “The Discovery of America through the Dream of Christopher Columbus” (1958-1959) and “Ecumenical Council” (1960) (in which Dali depicted himself) are bright representatives of the paintings of that time.

The canvas presents in its entirety scenes from the Bible (the supper itself, Christ’s walking on water, the crucifixion, prayer before the betrayal of Judas), which are surprisingly combined, intertwined with each other.

The biblical theme occupies a significant position in the works of Salvador Dali. The artist tried to find God in the world around him, in himself, imagining Christ as the center of the primordial Universe (“Christ of St. John of the Cross”, 1951).

Dali sculptures

Salvador Dali in 1972

The image of Dali in cinema

A country	Name	Director	Salvador Dali
Sweden	The Adventures of Picasso	Tage Danielsson
Germany Spain Mexico	Buñuel and King Solomon's Table	Carlos Saura	Ernesto Alterio
Great Britain Spain	Echoes of the past	Paul Morrison	Robert Pattison
USA Spain	Midnight in Paris	Woody Allen	Adrien Brody

Notes

Literature

Delassin S. Gala for Dali. Biography of a married couple. M., Text, 2008.
George Orwell. The privilege of spiritual shepherds. Essay. - Lenizdat, 1990.

Links

Salvador Dali (full name - Salvador Domènec Felip Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Púbol; cat. Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí de Púbol; Spanish. Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí y de Púbol ). Born May 11, 1904 in Figueres - died January 23, 1989 in Figueres. Spanish painter, graphic artist, sculptor, director, writer. One of the most famous representatives of surrealism.

Worked on the films: “Un Chien Andalou,” “The Golden Age,” “Spellbound.” Author of the books “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, Told by Himself” (1942), “The Diary of a Genius” (1952-1963), Oui: The Paranoid-Critical Revolution (1927-33) and the essay “The Tragic Myth of Angelus Millet.”

Salvador Dali was born in Spain on May 11, 1904 in the city of Figueres, province of Girona, into the family of a wealthy notary. He was a Catalan by nationality, perceived himself as such and insisted on this peculiarity of his. Had a sister and an older brother (October 12, 1901 - August 1, 1903), who died of meningitis. Later, at the age of 5, at his grave, Salvador was told by his parents that he was the reincarnation of his older brother.

As a child, Dali was a smart, but arrogant and uncontrollable child.

Once he even started a scandal in the shopping area for the sake of a candy, a crowd gathered around and the police asked the owner of the shop to open it during siesta and give this sweetness to the naughty boy. He achieved his goal through whims and simulation, always striving to stand out and attract attention.

Numerous complexes and phobias prevented him from engaging in normal activities. school life, establish ordinary bonds of friendship and sympathy with children.

But, like any person, experiencing sensory hunger, he sought emotional contact with children by any means, trying to get used to their team, if not as a comrade, then in any other role, or rather the only one he was capable of - as a shocking and a naughty child, strange, eccentric, always acting contrary to other people's opinions.

When he lost in school gambling games, he acted as if he had won and celebrated. Sometimes he would start fights for no reason.

Part of the complexes that led to all this were caused by the classmates themselves: they treated the “strange” child rather intolerantly, took advantage of his fear of grasshoppers, slipped these insects down his collar, which drove Salvador to hysterics, which he later told about in his book “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, Told by Himself.”

Learn fine arts started in municipal art school. From 1914 to 1918 he was educated at the Academy of the Brothers of the Marist Order in Figueres. One of his childhood friends was the future FC Barcelona footballer Josep Samitier. In 1916, with the family of Ramon Pichó, he went on vacation to the city of Cadaqués, where he became acquainted with modern art.

In 1921 he entered the Academy of San Fernando. The drawing, presented by him as an applicant, was highly appreciated by the teachers, but was not accepted due to its small size. Salvador Dali was given 3 days to create a new drawing. However, the young man was in no hurry to get to work, which greatly worried his father, who was already long years suffered his quirks. In the end, young Dali announced that the drawing was ready, but it was even smaller than the previous one, and this was a blow for his father. However, the teachers, due to their extremely high skill, made an exception and accepted the young eccentric into the academy.

In the same year, Salvador Dali's mother dies, which becomes a tragedy for him.

In 1922 he moved to the “Residence” (Spanish: Residencia de Estudiantes) ( student hostel in Madrid for gifted young people) and begins his studies. In those years, everyone noted his panache. At this time he met Luis Buñuel, Federico Garcia Lorca, Pedro Garfias. He reads works with enthusiasm.

Acquaintance with new trends in painting is developing - Dali experiments with the methods of cubism and dadaism. In 1926, he was expelled from the Academy for his arrogant and disdainful attitude towards teachers. In the same year he goes to Paris for the first time, where he meets. Trying to find his own style, in the late 1920s he created a number of works influenced by Picasso and Joan Miró. In 1929, he participated with Buñuel in the creation of the surreal film “Un Chien Andalou.”

At the same time, he first meets his future wife Gala (Elena Dmitrievna Dyakonova), who was then the wife of the poet Paul Eluard. Having become close to Salvador, Gala, however, continued to meet with her husband and started relationships with other poets and artists, which at that time seemed acceptable in those bohemian circles where Dali, Eluard and Gala moved. Realizing that he actually stole his friend’s wife, Salvador paints his portrait as “compensation.”

The provocative, shocking and seemingly terrible actions of the artist were not always worth understanding literally and seriously: he probably did not want to offend his mother and did not even imagine what this would lead to, perhaps he longed to experience a series of feelings and experiences that he stimulated in such a blasphemous, at first glance, act. But the father, upset by the long-ago death of his wife, whom he loved and whose memory he carefully preserved, could not stand his son’s antics, which became the last straw for him. In retaliation, the indignant Salvador Dali sent his sperm to his father in an envelope with an angry letter: “This is all I owe you.” Later, in the book “The Diary of a Genius,” the artist, already an elderly man, speaks well of his father, admits that he loved him very much and endured the suffering caused by his son.

In 1934, he unofficially married Gala (the official wedding took place in 1958 in the Spanish town of Girona). In the same year he visited the USA for the first time.

After Caudillo Franco came to power in 1936, Dalí quarreled with the surrealists on the left and was expelled from the group.

In response, Dali, not without reason, states: "Surrealism is me".

Salvador was practically apolitical, and even his monarchist views should be understood surrealistically, that is, not seriously, as well as his constantly advertised sexual passion for Hitler.

He lived surrealistically, his statements and works had a broader and deeper meaning than the interests of specific political parties.

So, in 1933, he painted the painting The Riddle of William Tell, where he depicts the Swiss folk hero in the image of Lenin with a huge buttock.

Dali reinterpreted the Swiss myth according to Freud: Tell became a cruel father who wants to kill his child. Personal memories of Dali, who broke with his father, were layered. Lenin was perceived by communist-minded surrealists as a spiritual, ideological father. The painting depicts dissatisfaction with an overbearing parent, a step towards the formation of a mature personality. But the surrealists took the drawing literally, as a caricature of Lenin, and some of them even tried to destroy the canvas.

In 1937, the artist visited Italy and was delighted with the works of the Renaissance. In his own works, the correctness of human proportions and other academic features begin to dominate. Despite the departure from surrealism, his paintings are still filled with surrealist fantasies. Later, Dali (in the best traditions of his conceit and shockingness) credits himself with saving art from modernist degradation, with which he associates his own name (“Salvador” translated from Spanish means “Savior”).

In 1939, Andre Breton, mocking Dali and the commercial component of his work (which, however, Breton himself was not alien to), came up with an anagram nickname for him: “Avida Dollars” (which in Latin is not entirely accurate, but recognizable means “ greedy for dollars"). Breton's joke instantly gained enormous popularity, but did not harm Dalí's commercial success, which far exceeded Breton's.

With the outbreak of World War II, Dali and Gala left for the United States, where they lived from 1940 to 1948. In 1942, he published a fictionalized autobiography, “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.” His literary experiments, like his works of art, usually turn out to be commercially successful. He collaborates with Walt Disney. He invites Dali to test his talent in cinema - an art that at that time was surrounded by an aura of magic, miracles and wide possibilities. But the surreal cartoon project Destino, proposed by Salvador, was considered commercially unfeasible, and work on it was stopped. Dali works with director Alfred Hitchcock and paints the scenery for the dream scene from the film Spellbound. However, the scene was included in the film very truncated - again for commercial reasons.

His relationship with Gala is quite complicated. On the one hand, from the very beginning of their relationship, she promoted him, found buyers for his paintings, convinced him to paint works that were more understandable to the mass audience (the change in his painting at the turn of the 20-30s was striking), shared with him the luxury, and need. When there was no order for paintings, Gala forced her husband to develop product brands and costumes: her strong, decisive nature was very necessary for the weak-willed artist. Gala was putting things in order in his studio, patiently putting away canvases, paints, and souvenirs that Dali had scattered senselessly while looking for the right thing. On the other hand, she constantly had relationships on the side, in her later years the spouses often quarreled, Dali’s love was rather a wild passion, and Gala’s love was not devoid of calculation, with which she “married a genius.” In 1968, Dali bought a castle for Gala in the village of Pubol, in which she lived separately from her husband, and which he himself could visit only with the written permission of his wife. In 1981, Dali developed Parkinson's disease. Gala dies in 1982.

After the death of his wife, Dali experiences deep depression.

His paintings themselves are simplified, and for a long time they are dominated by the motif of grief (variations on the theme “Pietà”).

Parkinson's disease also prevents Dali from painting.

His most recent works (“Cockfights”) are simple squiggles in which the bodies of the characters are guessed - the last attempts at self-expression of an unfortunate sick person.

It was difficult to care for a sick and distraught old man; he threw himself at the nurses with whatever came to hand, screamed, and bit.

After Gala's death, Salvador moved to Pubol, but in 1984 there was a fire in the castle. The paralyzed old man rang the bell unsuccessfully, trying to call for help. In the end, he overcame his weakness, fell out of bed and crawled towards the exit, but lost consciousness at the door. Dali was taken to the hospital with severe burns, but survived. Before this incident, Salvador may have planned to be buried next to Gala, and even prepared a place in the crypt in the castle. However, after the fire, he left the castle and moved to the theater-museum, where he remained until the end of his days.

The only intelligible phrase he uttered during the years of illness was “My friend Lorca”: the artist recalled the years of his happy, healthy youth, when he was friends with the poet.

The artist bequeathed to bury him so that people could walk on the grave, so Dali’s body is walled up in the floor in one of the rooms of the Dali Theater-Museum in the city of Figueres.

The most famous works of Salvador Dali:

Self-Portrait with Raphael's Neck (1920-1921)
Portrait of Luis Buñuel (1924)
Flesh on the Stones (1926)
The Gizmo and the Hand (1927)
The Invisible Man (1929)
Enlightened Pleasures (1929)
Portrait of Paul Eluard (1929)
Riddles of Desire: "My Mother, My Mother, My Mother" (1929)
The Great Masturbator (1929)
William Tell (1930)
The Persistence of Memory (1931)
Partial hallucination. Six apparitions of Lenin on the piano (1931)
Paranoid Transformations of Gala's Face (1932)
Retrospective Bust of a Woman (1933)
The Mystery of William Tell (1933)
Mae West's face (used as a surreal room) (1934-1935)
Woman with a Head of Roses (1935)
Pliable structure with boiled beans: premonition civil war (1936)
Venus de Milo with boxes (1936)
Giraffe on Fire (1936-1937)
Anthropomorphic Locker (1936)
Telephone - Lobster (1936)
Sun Table (1936)
Metamorphoses of Narcissus (1936-1937)
The Riddle of Hitler (1937)
Swans Reflecting in Elephants (1937)
Appearance of a face and a bowl of fruit on the seashore (1938)
Slave Market with the Appearance of Voltaire's Invisible Bust (1938)
Poetry of America (1943)
A dream caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate a second before awakening (1944)
The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1946)
Nude Dali contemplating five ordered bodies turning into corpuscles from which Leda Leonardo is unexpectedly created, fertilized by the face of Gala (1950)
Raphael's Head Explosion (1951)
Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951)
Galatea with Spheres (1952)
Crucifixion or Hypercubic Body (1954) Corpus hypercubus
Colossus of Rhodes (1954)
Sodom's Self-Pleasure of an Innocent Maiden (1954)
Last Supper (1955)
Our Lady of Guadalupe (1959)
Discovery of America through the sleep of Christopher Columbus (1958-1959)
Ecumenical Council (1960)
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (1976).

On May 11, 1904 at 8:45 a.m. in Spain, in Catalonia (northeast Spain), Figueres, little Dali was born. Full name Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali y Domenech. His parents are Don Salvador Dali y Cusi and Dona Felipa Domenech. Salvador means "Savior" in Spanish. They named Salvador after his deceased brother. He died of meningitis a year before Dali was born in 1903. Dali also had a younger sister, Anna-Maria, who in the future would be the image of many of his paintings. Little Dali's parents raised him differently. Since since childhood he had been distinguished by his impulsive and eccentric character, his father was literally infuriated by his antics. Mom, on the contrary, allowed him absolutely everything.

I'm pi He got into bed almost until he was eight years old - just for his own pleasure. I reigned and commanded in the house. Nothing was impossible for me. My father and mother didn’t pray for me (The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, as told by himself)

Dali's desire for creativity manifested itself from early childhood. At the age of 4, he began to draw with a zeal unprecedented for a child. At the age of six, Dali was attracted to the image of Napoleon and, identifying himself with him, he felt the need for power. Having put on the king's fancy dress, he took great pleasure in his appearance. Well, he painted his first picture when he was 10 years old. It was a small landscape in the impressionist style, painted oil paints on a wooden plank. Then Salvador began taking drawing lessons from Professor Joao Nunez. Thus, at the age of 14 one could confidently see the talent of Salvador Dali incarnate.

When he was almost 15 years old, Dali was expelled from the monastic school for bad behavior. But this was not a failure for him; he passed his exams with flying colors and entered college. In Spain, schools of secondary education were called institutes. And in 1921 he graduated from the institute with excellent grades.
Afterwards he entered the Madrid Academy of Art. When Dali was 16 years old, he began to become interested in painting and literature, and began to write. He publishes his essays in the self-made publication “Studio”. And in general it leads enough active life. Managed to serve a day in prison for participating in student unrest.

Salvador Dali dreamed of creating his own style in painting. In the early 20s he admired the work of the futurists. At the same time, he made acquaintances with famous poets of that time (Garcia Lorca, Luis Bonuel). The relationship between Dali and Lorca was very close. In 1926, Lorca's poem "Ode to Salvador Dalí" was published, and in 1927, Dalí designed the sets and costumes for the production of Lorca's "Mariana Pineda".
In 1921, Dali's mother dies. The father later marries another woman. For Dali, this looks like a betrayal. Later in his works he portrays the image of a father who wants to destroy his son. This event left its mark on the artist’s work.

In 1923, Dali became very interested in the works of Pablo Picasso. At the same time, problems began at the academy. He was suspended for a year for disciplinary violations.

In 1925, Dali held his first personal exhibition at the Dalmau Gallery. He presented 27 paintings and 5 drawings.

In 1926, Dali completely stopped making efforts to study, because... disappointed in school. And they kicked him out after the incident. He did not agree with the teachers’ decision regarding one of the painting teachers, then stood up and left the hall. A brawl immediately broke out in the hall. Of course, Dali was considered guilty, although he didn’t even know about what happened, and he ends up in prison, although not for long. But he soon returned to the academy. Ultimately, his behavior led to his expulsion from the academy for his refusal to take an oral examination. As soon as he learns that his last question is a question about Raphael, Dali declared: “... I do not know less than three professors combined, and I refuse to answer them because I am better informed on this matter.”

In 1927, Dali traveled to Italy to become familiar with Renaissance painting. While he was not yet part of the surrealist group led by Andre Breton and Max Ernst, he later joined them in 1929. Breton deeply studied the works of Freud. He said that by discovering unexpressed thoughts and desires hidden in the subconscious, surrealism could create new image life and the way of perceiving it.

In 1928, he left for Paris to find himself.

At the beginning of 1929, Dali tried himself as a director. The first film based on his script by Luis Bonuel was released. The film was called "Un Chien Andalou". Surprisingly, the film script was written in 6 days! The premiere was a sensation, as the film itself was very extravagant. Considered a classic of surrealism. Consisted of a set of frames and scenes. It was a small short film designed to touch the heart of the bourgeoisie and ridicule the principles of the avant-garde.

Before 1929, Dali had nothing bright or significant in his personal life. Of course, he walked around, had numerous relationships with girls, but they never went far. And just in 1929, Dali truly fell in love. HER name was Elena Dyakonova or Gala. Russian by origin, she was 10 years older than him. She was married to the writer Paul Eluard, but their relationship was already falling apart. Her fleeting movements, gestures, her expressiveness are like the second New Symphony: it reveals the architectonic contours of a perfect soul, crystallizing in the grace of the body itself, in the aroma of the skin, in the sparkling sea foam her life. Expressing an exquisite breath of feelings, plasticity and expressiveness materialize in impeccable architecture made of flesh and blood . (The Secret Life of Salvador Dali)

They met when Dali returned to Cadaques to work on an exhibition of his paintings. Among the guests of the exhibition was Paul Eluard with his then-wife Gala. Gala became Dali's inspiration in many of his works. He painted all kinds of portraits of her, as well as various images based on their relationship and passion." First kiss, - Dali wrote later, - when our teeth collided and our tongues intertwined, was only the beginning of that hunger that made us bite and gnaw each other to the very essence of our being." Such images often appeared in Dali's subsequent works: chops on a human body, fried eggs, cannibalism - all these images evoke the frantic sexual liberation of a young man.

Dali wrote in an absolutely unique style. It seems that he drew images known to everyone: animals, objects. But he arranged them and connected them in a completely unimaginable way. Could connect the torso of a woman with a rhinoceros, for example, or a melted watch. Dali himself would call this the “paranoid-critical method.”

1929 Dali had his first personal exhibition in Paris at the Geman Gallery, after which he began his path to the pinnacle of fame.

In 1930, Dali's paintings began to bring him fame. His work was influenced by the works of Freud. In his paintings he reflected human sexual experiences, as well as destruction and death. His masterpieces such as “The Persistence of Memory” were created. Dali also creates numerous models from various objects.

In 1932, the second film based on Dali's script, The Golden Age, premiered in London.

Gala divorces her husband in 1934 and marries Dali. This woman was Dali’s muse and deity throughout his life.

Between 1936 and 1937, Dali worked on one of his most famous paintings, “Metamorphoses of Narcissus,” and a book of the same name immediately appeared.
In 1939, Dali had a serious quarrel with his father. The father was dissatisfied with his son’s relationship with Gala and forbade Dali to appear in the house.

After the occupation in 1940, Dalí moved from France to the USA to California. There he opens his workshop. She writes her own there too famous book"The Secret Life of Salvador Dali." After his marriage to Gala, Dali left the surrealist group because... His and the group's views begin to diverge. “I don’t care at all about the gossip that Andre Breton may spread about me, he simply doesn’t want to forgive me for the fact that I remain the last and only surrealist, but it is still necessary that one fine day the whole world will read these lines , found out how everything really happened." ("The Diary of a Genius").

In 1948, Dali returned to his homeland. Begins to get involved in religious and fantastic themes.

In 1953, a large-scale exhibition took place in Rome. He exhibits 24 paintings, 27 drawings, 102 watercolors.

In 1956, Dali began a period when the inspiration for his second work was the idea of the Angel. God for him is an elusive concept that cannot be specified in any way. God for him is not a cosmic concept either, because this would impose certain restrictions on him. Dali sees God as a collection of contradictory thoughts that cannot be reduced to any structured idea. But Dali really believed in the existence of angels. He spoke about this this way: “Whatever dreams fall to my lot, they are capable of giving me pleasure only if they have complete reliability. Therefore, if I already experience such pleasure when angelic images approach, then I have every reason believe that angels really exist."

Meanwhile, in 1959, since his father no longer wanted to let Dali in, he and Gala settled down to live in Port Lligat. Dali's paintings were already extremely popular, sold for a lot of money, and he himself was famous. He often communicates with William Tell. Under the influence, he creates such works as “The Riddle of William Tell” and “William Tell”.

Basically, Dali worked on several topics: the paranoid-critical method, the Freudian-sexual theme, the theory of modern physics and sometimes religious motives.

In the 60s, the relationship between Gala and Dali began to crack. Gala asked to buy another house in order to move out. After this, their relationship was already just the remnants of a past bright life, but the image of Gala never left Dali and continued to be an inspiration.
In 1973, the “Dali Museum” opened in Figueras, incredible in its content. Until now, he amazes viewers with his surreal appearance.
In 1980, Dali began to have health problems. The death of Franco, head of state of Spain, shocked and frightened Dalí. Doctors suspect he has Parkinson's disease. Dali's father died from this disease.

In 1982, Gala died on June 10. For Dali, this was a terrible blow. He did not participate in the funeral. They say that Dali entered the crypt only a few hours later. “Look, I’m not crying,” was all he said. The death of Gala for Dali was a huge blow in his life. What the artist lost with Gala’s departure was known only to him. He walked alone through the rooms of their house, saying something about happiness and the beauty of Gala. He stopped drawing and sat for hours in the dining room, where all the shutters were closed.
Last work"Swallowtail" was completed in 1983.

In 1983, Dali’s health seemed to improve, and he began to go out for walks. But these changes were short-lived.

On August 30, 1984, there was a fire in Dali’s house. The burns on his body covered 18% of the skin surface.
By February 1985, Dali’s health was improving again and he even gave an interview to the newspaper.
But in November 1988, Dali was admitted to the hospital. The diagnosis is heart failure. On January 23, 1989, Salvador Dali passed away. He was 84 years old.

At his request, the body was embalmed and was kept in his museum for a week. Dali was buried in the very center of his own museum under a simple slab without inscriptions. The life of Salvador Dali has always been bright and eventful; throughout his life he was distinguished by his extraordinary and extravagant behavior. He changed unusual costumes, the style of his mustache, and constantly praised his talent in the books he wrote (“The Diary of a Genius,” “Dali by Dali,” “ golden book Dali", " Secret life Salvador Dali"). There was such a case when he gave lectures at the London Group Rooms in 1936. It was held as part of the International Surrealist Exhibition. Dali appeared in a deep-sea diver costume.

DALI SALVADOR

(b. 1904 - d. 1989)

“How did you want to understand my paintings, when I myself, who create them, don’t understand them either.”

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali was born twice. His father, the notary public of Figueres, an anti-Madrid Republican and also an atheist, also named Salvador Dalí, was twenty-nine years old when his first son, Salvador, was born on the morning of October 21, 1901. However, after some time (in 1903), the baby died of meningitis. The disease developed as a result of a blow inflicted on him by his father during one of his frequent outbursts of anger.

The second Salvador Dali (born Salvador Philippe Jaquinto Dali and Dominic) was born nine months and ten days after his brother's death - on May 2, 1904. Subsequently, he recalled how, as a child, he was afraid to enter his parents’ bedroom, where a portrait of his deceased twin brother hung above the bed.

Dali's mother is a typical representative of her class, a loving wife and an unwavering Catholic. Without a doubt, it was she who insisted that the family attend church regularly, often calling her deceased firstborn a genius and taking little Salvador with her to her brother’s grave. And the baby, seeing his name on the tombstone, experienced deep anxiety and lost peace of mind. As a result, Salvador formed a strong opinion that his parents did not love him at all, but his older brother, which he spoke about in 1976 in his autobiographical “Unspoken Revelations.”

The child grew up in a family dominated by women: the old grandmother sat in her rocking chair, Dali's mother gave orders, Dali's unmarried aunt, his nanny and maids helped with the housework. And in the center of this world was Salvador - the spoiled prince, around whom this round dance of women revolved.

His so-called tantrums and childhood illnesses (which he later called sore throats) were major events in the claustrophobic life of the family. From a very early age, Salvador had unusual fits in which he would suddenly and inexplicably fall into a state of anger, which his eternally agitated mother could only calm with promises that he could dress up in a king's fancy dress. Grateful Dali considered his mother perfect. As for his father, he became his fierce enemy and rival in the struggle for his mother’s affections and feelings. To annoy him, Dali deliberately wet his bed until he was eight years old, and also gave himself coughing fits that simulated suffocation, which made his father shake with fear.

Salvador grew up as a strange child. He was always distinguished by his unusual and pretentious behavior, even from his younger sister Anna-Maria (to whom, by the way, he already experienced sexual attraction as a young man). Once, when he was with his father in Barcelona, he asked his son to buy tortillas and gave him money. After some time, Dali Jr. returned with two empty packages. When asked where the cakes were, the boy calmly replied that he “got rid of them because he doesn’t like yellow” (there is a fairly widespread opinion, even among psychiatrists, that people with schizophrenia “cannot stand” the color yellow).

The boy went to school extremely reluctantly. Firstly, he did not want to change his usual environment of total adoration from women. Secondly, Salvador, in principle, did not want to obey his father’s will. In primary school, the child learned absolutely nothing. It was then that his “wanderings” began from one educational institution to another. But there was no point, since Dali behaved everywhere like a notorious loafer.

From the age of 14, during puberty, the young man let his hair grow, stole his mother's cosmetics, thickly covered his face with rice powder, lined his eyes and eyebrows with pencil, and bit his lips to make them bright. Those around him did not understand him, but he was not at all upset about this, but, on the contrary, boasted of his dissimilarity. Free time Dali filled himself with reading Nietzsche, Voltaire, Kant, who inspired him to write poetry (later Dali would claim that he was better as a writer than as an artist, and took his literary activity no less seriously than painting).

When Salvador turned seventeen, his mother died of cancer. Childhood is over. His father sent him to the Student Residence, where Francisco Goya was once one of the directors. It was there that the young man met Federico Garcia Lorca, who became his close friend. In the future, Dali will paint portraits of Lorca, they will travel together and even live in Salvador’s house. It was then that Dali’s sister fell in love with Lorca, but he refused her, preferring to have Salvador as his lover.

Four years after the death of his wife, Dali's father remarried - to ex-wife own brother. Dali considered this a betrayal. Thus was born one of his very first artistic allegories, based on the story of William Tell, whom Dali turned into an Oedipal father who wants to destroy his son. Dali returned to this theme over the years.

If we talk about Salvador Dali’s talent as an artist, it manifested itself very early. Even at the age of four, the child developed the habit of drawing on the tablecloth and on the edge of the crib. The surprising thing is that when the baby started drawing, he was completely immersed in this activity and concentrated on it for a long time, which in itself is unusual for such a young age. At the age of seven, the boy saw a bust of Napoleon and became literally obsessed with this image (“I chose this model for myself, the king”).

Once in a class where they were drawing from life, Dali amused himself by firing pellets of clay at the model. When the peacefully sitting sitter discovered who exactly was playing the fool, he came down from the dais and sharply said to Dali: “Listen, do you know that you are a son of a bitch?” To which Dali calmly replied: “Well, yes, I already know that.” The sitter was so surprised that he returned to his previous place and again assumed the desired pose.

However, despite his obvious talent, in 1926 Dali was expelled from the Residence. The reason was constant clashes with teachers and his incitement to unrest among students. Although by this time he already had his first personal exhibition (in November 1925 at the Delmo Gallery in Barcelona), which was received favorably by the public and critics.

However, studying in Madrid allowed him to meet people who had a great influence on his entire life. One of them is Luis Buñuel, who for half a century became one of the most revered avant-garde film directors in Europe. In 1929, Buñuel invited the artist to Paris to work on a surrealist film, where he planned to use images “caught” from his own unconscious. The film was called "Un Chien Andalou." Today this picture, shot to touch the heart of the bourgeoisie and ridicule the excesses of the avant-garde, is considered a classic of surrealism. Among the most shocking images is the famous and oft-quoted scene created by Dali: a man's eye is cut in half by a razor blade. The decaying donkeys that appeared in other scenes were also part of Dali's contribution to the film.

After the first public screening of the film at the Théâtre des Ursulines, Buñuel and Dalí became famous. Two years after Un Chien Andalou, The Golden Age was released, which critics received with no less enthusiasm. But then he also became a bone of contention between Buñuel and Dali: each claimed that his contribution to the work on the film was greater than the other. However, despite the disputes, their collaboration left a deep mark on the lives of both artists and contributed to the fact that Dali finally took the path of surrealism.

Most of the surrealists of the time, such as Andre Masson, Max Ernst and Joan Miró, explored their own subconscious, freeing the mind from rational control and allowing thoughts to float freely and uncontrollably, like soap bubbles, without any sequence. This process was called “automatism” and was reflected in the creation of purely abstract forms, which were “casts” of unconscious images.

Dali's approach was different. He painted images familiar to the human mind: people, animals, buildings, landscapes, but often merged them, under the dictation of his own consciousness, in a grotesque manner, so that the limbs turned into fish, and the torsos of women into horses. To some extent, his style was reminiscent of the surreal automatism of writing, when words familiar in everyday communication are arranged into sentences without any rules or restrictions in order to express “free” ideas not “processed” by consciousness. Subsequently, Salvador Dali would call his unique approach the “paranoid-critical method.” As the artist claimed, he was freeing himself from subconscious images, like a madman. Perhaps he was not far from the truth, because his artistic images are so similar to the visual hallucinations of patients with schizophrenia.

Having completed work on "Un Chien Andalus", the artist returned home to Cadaqués to work on new exhibition of his paintings, which the Parisian art dealer Camille Goemans agreed to organize in the fall. The plots of most of the paintings were inspired by the complex problems of Dali’s own sexuality and his contradictory attitude towards his parents.

In The Great Masturbator, the head depicted on the canvas is a version of the rock on the coast of Cadaqués, growing out of a massive block. The neck continues into a woman's head, whose lips aim at the man's obscure genitals. His bloody knees suggest complete bloodshed, perhaps castration. This painting became a milestone in Dali's work. It reveals his constant preoccupation with sex (Salvador was afraid of women, but still felt attracted to them), and the fear of violence, and a sense of guilt. The painting also contains a pile of rocks that will accompany him throughout his work, and such a typical Dali image as locusts - one of the insects that inhabit his nightmares. Just below female head there is a white lily flower, whose yellow phallus-shaped pistil grows from soft pale petals. For Salvador Dali, this was a deeply personal painting, inspired by his own unconscious.

His next picture - "Sacred Heart" - caused undesirable consequences. In the center of the painting is a silhouette of the Madonna with the Sacred Heart. Above the silhouette was crudely scrawled: "Sometimes I like to spit on my mother's portrait." What may have been intended by the artist as a shocking advertising joke seemed to his father to be a desecration of the memory of his first wife and the mother of his children. As a result, Dali's father forbade him to ever cross the threshold of his house. According to the artist's words, he, tormented by remorse, cut his hair and buried it in his beloved Cadaques on the grave of his mother.

Among the many guests of that exhibition was the poet Paul Eluard, who came with his daughter Cecile and his wife Tala, who at one time was the mistress of Max Ernst, the founder of Dadaism and then surrealism. Tala herself was born in Kazan, on the Volga, in 1895 (she was almost ten years older than Dali). Her real name is Elena Delyuvina-Dyakonova. Over the years, Tala has told many fantastic stories about her ancestors. For example, she said that her father was a rich Kyrgyz gypsy from Siberia who lived in a tent and panned for gold on the river. In fact, she was an ordinary provincial girl.

Salvador Dali was so amazed by Gala’s beauty that during their conversation, out of embarrassment, he first burst into hysterical giggles, which then turned into uncontrollable laughter. He didn't know how to behave around her, although he admitted that she excited him wildly. At the same time, he hated Gala just as he once hated Lorca. She “came to invade and destroy my solitude, and I began to shower her with unfair and undeserved reproaches.” - Dali would later write in his diary.

In turn, Gala was embarrassed by this tense and eccentric young man, always preoccupied with the problem of masturbation and castration. Having left Paul Eluard, who returned to Paris alone after the exhibition, Dali and Gala found a way out of the current situation in sex. “The first kiss,” Dali later wrote, “when our teeth collided and our tongues intertwined, was only the beginning of satisfying that hunger that made us bite and gnaw each other to the very essence of our being.” Images reflecting associations between physiological and sensual hunger appeared frequently in Dali's subsequent works: chops on a human body, fried eggs, cannibalism - all these images evoke the frenetic sexual liberation of a young man. And how can we again not resist analogies with a schizophrenic disorder, in which sometimes there is a disinhibition of instincts, and structural and logical disorders of thinking are manifested earlier and most clearly in the unusual and even pretentiousness of the associative activity of the brain.

So, when the couple first eloped together, they locked themselves in their room at the Château de Cary-le-Rouet near Marseille and shut themselves off from the rest of the world. This flight continued throughout their married life, even when Dali became notorious.

Gala - whose reaction to Dali's fierce, passionate love was said to be the words: "My boy, we will never part" - became more than just a lover for him. When she eventually moved to El Salvador in 1930, she proved herself to be an excellent organizer, business manager, and accountant. They got married in 1934, and Gala's ex-husband, Paul Eluard, was a witness at the wedding ceremony. By the way, Gala, being married to Salvador Dali, did not abandon Eluard at all and wrote him erotic love letters. She did this for two reasons: firstly, Eluard was rich, and secondly, he was the main member of the surrealist group, one of Andre Breton’s two “deputies”.

Gala inspired artists, and it became a saying among the surrealists that if a painter achieved something beyond the ordinary, then “he must have had an affair with Gala.” In everyday life, life together with Dali, Gala often mocked her lover, calling him a “Catalan hillbilly” (for example, at the bank, Salvador presented a check, but refused to give it to the clerk until he was given the money). And yet, they were ideal for each other, because even being together, they continued to remain lonely, as before they met. During this period, Salvador Dali painted his most famous paintings: “Gloomy Game”, “Adaptability of Desires”, “Metamorphosis of Narcissus” and others.

Marriage to Gala awakened Dali's inexhaustible imagination and inexhaustible energy. A new period began in his work. At this time, his own surrealism completely prevailed over the norms and guidelines of the group and led to a complete break with Breton and other surrealists. Now Dali did not belong to any artistic union and claimed: “Surrealism is me.” In addition, in his creative quests, Dali began to use the technique of dual image, in which objects could be considered both as one and as two objects.

Now Dali had own recipe creativity, thanks to which he could release “inspiration” from the subconscious (the artist believed that unconscious images-symbols are some unchanging fundamental principles, matrices of all things, which other people perceive as something that came from the outside, and not from within, i.e. as inspiration ). The key ingredients were: a Freudian-sexual theme, a paranoid-critical method in which he churned his thoughts thoroughly like a delirious madman, and theories of modern physics. Having freed himself from the threads connecting him to a limited world, he became a free explorer of the universe he himself created.

Dali's desire to be recognized in a society that, in essence, was indifferent to contemporary art, he reached the point of manic psychosis. He sought to attract attention to himself at any cost and by any means. It was for this purpose that the artist began to create surreal “objects” that became his most famous works. He created a bust from a hairdressing mannequin, combining it with a French loaf and an inkwell. This was followed by a shocking and provocative, both in color and cut, aphrodisiac tuxedo 2, hung with wine glasses. His other famous works were “Lobster Telephone” and “Mae West’s Sofa Lips” 3.

But what attracted the public's attention most of all was not these strange objects, but his lectures on surrealism at the London Group Rooms. They were read as part of the International Surrealist Exhibition. The artist appeared before the audience dressed as a deep sea diver. The suit was “intended” to delve into the subconscious; Dali was greeted with loud applause. However, when Dali began to gasp and desperately gesticulate, the applause gave way to fear and confusion on the faces of the listeners. This was not exactly what Dali had in mind (the fact is that he was terribly afraid of death, so even during his travels, Salvador always wore a life jacket while walking on the deck), but the public’s attention was attracted.

Although in the artistic circles of Europe Dali was not considered a serious esthete because of his penchant for exoteric theories in art, in the USA, where only traditional attitudes were welcomed and where traditional European art hunted by millionaires and business kings, he was greeted with enthusiasm. His paintings, although of incomprehensible content, were accessible to visual perception, since they depicted understandable objects. Therefore, this impulsive personality, repulsed and irritated by everyone in Europe, was accepted in the United States.

Dali and Gala reluctantly left Europe, but soon settled comfortably first in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and then in Monterey, near San Francisco, California. The house in Monterey became their refuge, although they lived for a long time in New York, basking in luxury. During the eight years the couple spent in America, they amassed a huge fortune. At the same time, according to some critics, Dali paid with his reputation as an artist. He participated in numerous commercial projects: theater and ballet productions, jewelry design, fashion shows, even published a newspaper for the purpose of self-promotion (only two issues were published). He tried to publish his first manifesto - “Declaration of the Independence of the Imagination and the Rights of Man to His Own Madness” (it seems that by that time Dali himself had no doubt about his abnormality). But as the number of projects grew over time, he looked more like a mass entertainer than a serious artist engaged in exploring the means of expression in art. Although his popularity grew, Dali began to lose, at least in Europe, the support of art critics and art historians, on whom the reputation of any artist depends.

After one of his visits to the United States, where his fame reached unprecedented heights, thanks to which the sale of paintings was successful, Dali returned to Europe with another “device for creating paintings.” It was called an “electrocular monocle” and made it possible to transmit an image using a television signal to a telescopic tube and see both the object and its surroundings. This apparatus, Dali explained, was a response to his method of dual image and paranoid-critical method, as it was intended to help expand internal visual horizons, while other artists used narcotic psychostimulants for this purpose.

In 1973, the “Dali Museum” was opened in Figueres, rebuilt from an old theater and named “Palace of the Winds” (after the poem of the same name, which Dalí liked, which tells the legend of the unhappy love of the eastern wind). This incomparable surreal creation still delights visitors to this day. The museum presents a retrospective of the life of the great artist. A giant geodesic dome was erected above the stage. The auditorium has been cleared and divided into sectors in which his works of different genres are presented, including large paintings, such as "The Hallucinogenic Bullfighter". The great hoaxer dedicated one of the sectors of the museum to erotica (as he often liked to emphasize, erotica differs from pornography in that the former brings happiness to everyone, while the latter only brings failure). Dali also painted the foyer himself, depicting himself and Tala washing gold in Figueres. The museum itself was more like a bazaar due to the fact that it exhibited many various works and other trinkets. There, among other things, were the results of Dali's experiments with holography, as he hoped to create global three-dimensional images. In addition, Dali put on public display double spectroscopic paintings depicting a naked Gala.

By this time, the demand for his work was crazy. Publishers of books and magazines, managers of fashion houses, and theater directors tore him apart. He has already created illustrations for many masterpieces of world literature: the Bible, " The Divine Comedy» Dante,

Milton's Paradise Lost, Freud's God and Monotheism, Ovid's The Art of Love.

Despite such deafening popularity, unpleasant changes occurred in the artist’s personal life. Closer to old age, Gala completely ignored Salvador. Only his ability to make money kept her close. It was as if the fifty years we had lived together never happened. Their alienation began back in the 60s. At her request, Dali was forced to buy her a castle, where she spent time in the company of young people. The rest of their life together was smoldering firebrands that had once been a bright fire of passion.

Gala died at the age of 84. When Dali was told the sad news, he did not react outwardly, only saying that his wife did not die and that she would never die at all. And indeed, he never approached his wife’s grave.

On July 20, 1982, just over a month after Gala's death, Salvador Dalí was honored to receive the Grand Cross of Charles III from the hands of King Juan Carlos.

The artist should now be called, at his own request, the Marquis de Dalí de Pubol. This title ennobled not only himself, but also his father's surname. Eleven days after the royal decree was promulgated, the kingdom of Spain bought from Dali “Particles of Ash” and “Harlequin with a Small Bottle of Rum” for one hundred million pesetas.

And on August 30, 1984, Dali almost lost his life. He had been bedridden for several days when somehow his bed caught fire. Perhaps the reason for this was a short circuit. The whole room was on fire, but Salvador managed to crawl to the door. Robert Desharnais, who managed Dali's affairs for many years, saved him from death by pulling him out of the burning room. Dali received severe burns (up to 18% of his entire body), and has not been heard from since then. Soon rumors spread that Dali was either completely paralyzed, or suffering from Parkinson's disease, or had completely lost his mind and was being forcibly kept locked up. But in February 1985, his health improved somewhat, and he even gave an interview to the most popular Spanish newspaper Pais, which became the last in his life. In November 1988, Salvador Dali was admitted to a Barcelona clinic with a suspicious diagnosis of heart failure for those who knew him closely.

Dalí died on November 23, 1989. He was buried in the same place where he lived - in the center of the stage of a small provincial opera house. There is one final joke associated with the artist's resting place, which the artist would have fully appreciated: his grave is located above the women's restroom.

From the book Diary of a Genius by Dali Salvador

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Surrealism and Salvador Dali “One Genius” about himself Among the written evidence and documents related to the history of art of the 20th century, diaries, letters, essays, interviews in which surrealists talk about themselves are very noticeable. This is Max Ernst, and Andre Masson, and Luis Buñuel, and

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Fantasies and Follies (Salvador Dali)

- the greatest Spanish artist, a brilliant representative of surrealism of the 20th century. Dali was born on May 11, 1904 in the family of a notary, a very wealthy man, Salvador Dali y Cusi, and the kind Dona Felipa Domenech. The future genius was born in a picturesque corner of the earth in the city of Figueres, located in northern Spain. Already at the age of six, the child showed a talent as a painter; he enthusiastically draws landscapes hometown and its surroundings. Thanks to the drawing lessons that Dali took from Professor Joan Nunez, his talent began to take real forms. Wealthy parents tried to give their son a good education. Since 1914, he studied at a monastic school in Figueres, from where he was expelled in 1918 for bad behavior. However, he successfully passes the exams and enters the Institute, which he graduates brilliantly in 1921 and, having completed his secondary education, enters the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. At the age of sixteen, another facet of his creative nature opened up - he begins to write, publishes his essays about famous artists Renaissance in a homemade publication called "Studio". Admiring the works of the futurists, Dali still dreams of his own style in painting.

In Madrid he meets many famous and talented people. Among them are Luis Buñuel and the famous poet Federico García Lorca, who had a great influence on the aspiring artist. In 1923, he was suspended from attending the Academy for a year for violating discipline. During this period, he was fascinated by the work of the great Pablo Picasso and in his paintings of this time (“Young Girls”) the influence of Cubism is clearly visible. At the end of 1925 at the Dalmau Gallery His first personal exhibition took place, where 27 paintings and five drawings of the future genius were presented. A little later, Dali leaves for Paris, where he becomes close with a group of surrealists by Andre Breton. During this period, he wrote his first surreal paintings, “Honey is Sweeter than Blood” and “Bright Joys” (1928, 1929). Dalí together with Luis Buñuel for a record short term(six days) writes the script for the film “Un Chien Andalou,” the scandalous premiere of which took place in early 1929. The film has become a classic of surreal cinema. And a new film, “The Golden Age,” has already been conceived, which will premiere in London in early 1931. In the same year, he met Elena Dyakonova or Gala, who later became not only his wife, but also a muse, a deity, and an inspiration for many years. Gala, in turn, lived only the life of her passionately adored Dali. True, they officially got married only in 1934, after Gala divorced the writer Paul Eluard. In 1931, the artist created such brilliant paintings as “The Persistence of Memory”, “Blurred Time”, the main themes of which are destruction, death and the world of sexual fantasies and unfulfilled human desires. During the period 1936-1937. Dali simultaneously creates famous painting“The Metamorphosis of Narcissus” and writes a literary work under the same title.

In 1940, Dali and his wife left for the USA, where the novel “Hidden Faces” would be written and, perhaps, best book artist - "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali." In addition, Dali is successfully engaged in commercial activities and, having accumulated a wonderful fortune, in 1948 he decided to return to Spain. Every year the popularity of the great artist grows, no one doubts his genius, his paintings are valued and bought for huge amounts of money. Over time, relations between the spouses began to deteriorate and in the late 60s Dali acquired a castle for Gala.

In 1970, Dali began to build his own Theater-Museum in Figueras, investing all my money in this project. In 1974, this surreal creation, another masterpiece of the great genius, was open to the public. The museum is filled with the works of the great artist and presents a retrospective of his life. On January 23, 1989, the great artist passed away. Thousands of people came to the Museum, where his body lay, to say goodbye to the great man. Salvador Dali, according to his will, was buried here, in his Museum, under one of the unmarked slabs.

	Dali, Salvador in Wikiquote
	Salvador Dalí on Wikimedia Commons

In what city was Salvador Dali born? Salvador Dali - biography, information, personal life

Youth

Break with the surrealists

The evolution of creativity. Departure from surrealism

Dali in the USA

Middle and old years

Last years

Some works

Dali sculptures

The image of Dali in cinema

see also

Notes

Literature

Links