Salvador Dali - biography, photo, personal life of the artist: Master of shocking. Salvador Dali - biography, information, personal life Where was Salvador born

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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 of 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 surreal 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”).

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 commercial 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 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 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 metamorphoses, 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. The main character, according to Dali himself, 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

Year	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

see also

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

	Dali, Salvador in Wikiquote
	Salvador Dalí on Wikimedia Commons

• Salvador Dali (English) on the website Internet Movie Database

Salvador Dali(list of works )
Favorites paintings	Landscape near Figueres Holiday in Figueres Garden in Llane Dreams of night walks Cubist self-portrait Portrait of Luis Buñuel Rum bottle with siphon Honey is sweeter than blood (study)

Biography and episodes of life Salvador Dali. When born and died Dali, memorable places and dates of important events in his life. Artist Quotes, Photo and video.

Years of life of Salvador Dali:

born May 11, 1904, died January 23, 1989

Epitaph

“Let your dark brush bathe in a sea populated with happiness and sails.”
From the poem “Ode to Salvador Dali” by Federico Garcia Lorca

Biography

It would seem that there should be no black spots in the biography of Salvador Dali, who published his diaries and autobiography with his own hands, nevertheless, with his revelations he only thickened the fog of secrecy around his name. It is still unknown what of Dali’s biography he told is true and what is fiction. For example, Dali claimed that, according to his parents, he was the reincarnation of his deceased brother. Dali himself created a myth about himself, but, as you know, there is some truth in every joke.

Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904 in the Spanish city of Figueres. He began drawing at the age of four and did it with amazing diligence and perseverance for a child, while remaining an uncontrollable, lazy and eccentric boy, which affected his studies. In his autobiography, he admits that he often pretended to be crazy in class in order to avoid a bad grade or criticism from the teacher. Already at the age of 14, he had his first exhibition, and at 17, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, from which he was kicked out a few years later for disrespect for teachers and arrogance. However, the link did not last long.

The turning point in Dali's life was 1929 - the year when he joined the surrealist movement and met Gala Eluard, who was still married at that time. It is still believed that without Gala, Salvador Dali could not have become what he became. It was she who supported his belief that he was talented, took care of all financial matters, put things in order in his workshop, and forced him to work. She completely took control of the life of the helpless and impractical Dali, and he saw her as his muse. Not everything was rosy in the relationship between the lovers - Gala had many young fans and she did not always refuse their advances. In 1968, Dali even bought a castle for Gala, which he could only visit at the invitation of his wife. At that time, Dali was already a rich and recognized artist. When the artist's muse died, it became a great tragedy for him. The death of his wife, developing Parkinson's disease - all this led to the fact that the brilliant Dali spent the last years of his life alone in Gala Castle.

Salvador Dali's death occurred on January 23, 1989. At the time of Dali's death he was 84 years old. Even Salvador Dali's funeral was not like an ordinary funeral. For a week, his embalmed body stood in the Dali Theater and Museum, which he opened, so that visitors could pay tribute to the memory of Salvador Dali. Then the so-called Dali’s funeral took place - his body was walled up in the floor of one of the museum’s rooms. This is what Dali himself wanted, when he bequeathed that people would walk on his grave.

Salvador Dali with his muse and beloved wife Gala (Elena Dyakonova)

Life line

May 11, 1904 Date of birth of Salvador Dali.
1914-1918 Study at the Academy of the Brothers of the Marist Order in Figueres.
1921 Entering the Academy of San Fernando, death of Salvador Dali's mother.
1922 Moving to Madrid, studying at the Residence.
1926 Expulsion from the Academy.
1929 Joining the surrealist group, breaking up with his father.
1934 Unofficial marriage to Elena Dyakonova (Gala).
1936 The exclusion of Dali from the group of surrealists.
1940-1948 Life in the USA.
1942 Release of the autobiography “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali”.
1958 Official wedding with Gala.
1968 Buying a castle in the village of Pubol.
1973 Opening of the Dali Theater-Museum.
1981 Development of Parkinson's disease in Dali.
1982 Death of Gala, Dali receiving the title of count.
January 23, 1989 Dali's date of death.

Memorable places

1. The city of Figueres, Spain, where Salvador Dali was born.
2. Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where Salvador Dali studied.
3. Dormitory for gifted students in Madrid “Residence”, where Dali studied.
4. Dali Theater-Museum, where Dali’s grave is located.
5. Pubol Castle, or Gala Dali Castle, which was the home of Salvador Dali in the 70s.

Episodes of life

Salvador Dali has always been distinguished by extravagance in behavior. Thus, employees of the Le Meurice hotel recalled that one day the artist demanded that a flock of sheep be brought to his room. When the sheep were brought in, Dali suddenly took out a pistol and began to shoot at the animals, but, fortunately, the pistol was loaded with blanks.

Dali was a master of jokes, pranks and eccentric acts. When he bought a castle for his wife, it turned out that getting to it was very difficult because of the bad road, which they have been trying to repair for fifteen years. Then Dali called the governor and invited him to a cup of tea. The governor arrived two hours late, complaining that the road was simply disgusting and that two tires had burst before they reached Dali. To which Salvador replied: “Yes, this worries me very much. In three weeks, Generalissimo Franco will come to visit us, and I’m afraid he will not approve of this state of affairs.” Road repairs were resumed the next morning.

Dali never changed his own style

Covenant

“Don’t be afraid of perfection: you will never achieve it!”

Documentary film "Biography of Salvador Dali"

Condolences

“Salvador Dali can be reproached for many things, but not for betraying art and creativity.”
Rudolf Balandin, writer

"He felt like a completely free man."
Enrique Sabater, friend and assistant of Salvador Dali

“He was Dali, and as he once said, every brush stroke he made was the equivalent of a tragedy he had experienced.”
Meredith Etherington-Smith, writer-biographer

Great and extraordinary man Salvador Dali was born in Spain in the city of Figueres in 1904 on May 11. His parents were very different. My mother believed in God, but my father, on the contrary, was an atheist. Salvador Dali's father's name was also Salvador. Many people believe that Dali was named after his father, but this is not entirely true. Although father and son had the same names, the younger Salvador Dali was named in memory of his brother, who died before he was two years old. This worried the future artist, as he felt like a double, some kind of echo of the past. Salvador had a sister who was born in 1908.

The childhood of Salvador Dali

Dali studied very poorly, was spoiled and restless, although he developed the ability to draw in childhood. Ramon Pichot became El Salvador's first teacher. Already at the age of 14 his paintings were at an exhibition in Figueres.

In 1921, Salvador Dali went to Madrid and entered the Academy of Fine Arts there. He didn't like studying. He believed that he himself could teach his teachers the art of drawing. He stayed in Madrid only because he was interested in communicating with his comrades. There he met Federico García Lorca and Luis Buñuel.

Studying at the Academy

In 1924, Dali was expelled from the academy for misbehavior. Returning there a year later, he was again expelled in 1926 without the right to reinstatement. The incident that led to this situation was simply amazing. During one of the exams, the academy professor asked to name the 3 greatest artists in the world. Dali replied that he would not answer questions of this kind, because not a single teacher from the academy had the right to be his judge. Dali was too contemptuous of teachers.

And by this time, Salvador Dali already had his own exhibition, which he visited himself. This was the catalyst for the artists to meet.

Salvador Dali's close relationship with Buñuel resulted in a film called “Un Chien Andalou,” which had a surrealistic slant. In 1929, Dali officially became a surrealist.

How Dali found his muse

In 1929, Dali found his muse. She became Gala Eluard. It is she who is depicted in many paintings by Salvador Dali. A serious passion arose between them, and Gala left her husband to be with Dali. At the time of meeting his beloved, Dali lived in Cadaqués, where he bought himself a hut without any special amenities. With the help of Gala Dali, it was possible to organize several excellent exhibitions, which took place in cities such as Barcelona, ​​London, and New York.

In 1936, a very tragicomic moment happened. At one of his exhibitions in London Dali decided to give a lecture in a diver's suit. Soon he began to choke. Actively gesturing with his hands, he asked to take off his helmet. The public took it as a joke, and everything worked out.

By 1937, when Dali had already visited Italy, the style of his work had changed significantly. The works of the Renaissance masters were too strongly influenced. Dali was expelled from the surrealist society.

During World War II, Dali went to the United States, where he was recognized, and quickly achieved success. In 1941, the US Museum of Modern Art opened its doors for his personal exhibition. Having written his autobiography in 1942, Dali felt that he was truly famous, as the book sold out very quickly. In 1946, Dali collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock. Of course, looking at the success of his former comrade, Andre Breton could not miss the chance to write an article in which he humiliated Dali - “Salvador Dali - Avida Dollars” (“Rowing Dollars”).

In 1948, Salvador Dali returned to Europe and settled in Port Lligat, traveling from there to Paris and then back to New York.

Dali was a very famous person. He did almost everything and was successful. It is impossible to count all his exhibitions, but the most memorable is the exhibition at the Tate Gallery, which was visited by about 250 million people, which cannot fail to impress.

Salvador Dali died in 1989 on January 23 after the death of Gala, who died in 1982.

We can say with confidence that people who have not heard of Dali simply do not exist. Some know him for his creativity, which reflected an entire era in the life of mankind, others for the shockingness with which he lived and painted.

All of Salvador Dali's works are worth millions these days, and there are always connoisseurs of creativity who are willing to pay the required amount for a canvas.

Dali and his childhood

The first thing that should be said about the great artist is that he is Spanish. By the way, Dali was incredibly proud of his nationality and was a true patriot of his country. The family into which he was born largely determined his life path and the characteristics of his position. The mother of the great creator was a deeply religious person, while his father was a convinced atheist. From childhood, Salvador Dali was immersed in an atmosphere of ambiguity and some ambivalence.

The author of paintings valued at millions was a rather weak student. A restless character, an uncontrollable desire to express his own opinion, and an overly active imagination did not allow him to achieve great success in his studies, but Dali showed himself as an artist quite early. Ramon Pichot was the first to notice his ability to draw, and directed the talent of the fourteen-year-old creator in the right direction. So, already at the age of fourteen, the young artist presented his works at an exhibition held in Figueres.

Youth

The works of Salvador Dali allowed him to enter the Madrid Academy of Fine Arts, but the young and even then outrageous artist did not stay there for long. Convinced of his exclusivity, he was soon expelled from the academy. Later, in 1926, Dali decided to continue his studies, but was expelled again, without the right to reinstatement.

A huge role in the life of the young artist was played by his acquaintance with Luis Bonuel, who later became one of the most famous directors working in the genre of surrealism, and Federico, who went down in history as one of the most prominent poets in Spain.

Expelled from the Academy of Arts, the young artist did not hide his feelings, which allowed him in his youth to organize his own exhibition, which was visited by the great Pablo Picasso.

Muse of Salvador Dali

Of course, any creator needs a muse. For Dali, she was Gala Eluard, who was at

The moment of meeting the great surrealist married. A deep, all-consuming passion became the impetus for Gala to leave her husband and for Salvador Dali himself to actively create. The beloved became for the surrealist not only an inspiration, but also a kind of manager. Thanks to her efforts, the works of Salvador Dali became known in London, New York and Barcelona. The artist's fame acquired completely different dimensions.

Avalanche of glory

As befits any creative person, the artist Dali constantly developed, strived forward, improved and transformed his technique. Of course, this led to significant changes in his life, the least of which was his exclusion from the list of surrealists. However, this did not affect his career in any way. Multi-thousand and then multi-million dollar exhibitions gained momentum. The realization of greatness came to the artist after the publication of his autobiography, the circulation of which sold out in record time.

The most famous works

A person who does not know a single work of Salvador Dali simply does not exist, but few can name at least a few works of the great artist. All over the world, the creations of the outrageous artist are preserved like the apple of an eye and are shown to millions of visitors to museums and exhibitions.

Salvador Dali almost always painted his most famous paintings in a certain outburst of feelings, as a result of a certain emotional outburst. For example, “Self-Portrait with Raphael’s Neck” was painted after the death of the artist’s mother, which became a real emotional trauma for Dali, which he repeatedly admitted.

“The Persistence of Memory” is one of Dali’s most famous works. This particular painting has several different names that coexist equally in art circles. In this case, the canvas depicts the place in which the artist lived and worked - Port Lligata. Many creativity researchers argue that the deserted shore in this picture reflects the inner emptiness of the creator himself. Salvador Dali painted “Time” (as this painting is also called) under the impression of the melting of Camembert cheese, from which, perhaps, the key images of the masterpiece emerged. The clock, which takes on completely unimaginable forms on canvas, symbolizes the human perception of time and memory. The Persistence of Memory is definitely one of Salvador Dali's most profound and thoughtful works.

Variety of creativity

It's no secret that Salvador Dali's paintings are very different from each other. A certain period in an artist’s life is characterized by one or another manner, style, or certain direction. By the time when the creator publicly declared: “Surrealism is me!” - refers to works written from 1929 to 1934. Such paintings as “William Tell”, “The Evening Ghost”, “Bleeding Roses” and many others belong to this period.

The listed works differ significantly from the paintings of the period limited to 1914 and 1926, when Salvador Dali kept his work within certain limits. The early works of the master of shocking are characterized by greater uniformity, measuredness, greater calm, and to some extent greater realism. Among such paintings are “Holiday in Figueres”, “Portrait of my father”, painted in 1920-1921, “View of Cadaqués from Mount Pani”.

Salvador Dali painted his most famous paintings after 1934. From that time on, the artist’s method became “paranoid-critical.” The creator worked in this vein until 1937. Among Dali's works at this time, the most famous were the paintings "Pliable Structure with Boiled Beans (Premonition of the Civil War)" and "Atavistic Remains of Rain"

The “paranoid-critical” period was followed by the so-called American period. It was at this time that Dali wrote his famous “Dream”, “Galarine” and “Dream inspired by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate, a moment before awakening.”

The works of Salvador Dali become increasingly tense over time. The American period is followed by a period of nuclear mysticism. The painting “Sodom Self-satisfaction of an Innocent Maiden” was painted precisely at this time. During the same period, in 1963, the “Ecumenical Council” was written.

Dali calms down

Art historians call the period from 1963 to 1983 the period of the “last role.” The works of these years are calmer than previous ones. They exhibit clear geometry, very confident graphics, and not smooth, melting lines predominate, but clear and fairly strict lines. Here we can highlight the famous “Warrior”, written in 1982, or “The Appearance of a Face in the Background of a Landscape”.

The Less Known Dali

Few people know, but Salvador Dali created his greatest works not only on canvas and wood and not only with the help of paints. The artist’s acquaintance with Luis Bonuel not only largely determined the further direction of Dali’s work, but was also reflected in the painting “Un Chien Andalusian,” which shocked the audience at the time. It was this film that became a kind of slap in the face of the bourgeoisie.

Soon, Dali and Bonuel parted ways, but their joint work went down in history.

Dali and shocking

Even the artist’s appearance suggests that this is a deeply creative, extraordinary nature, striving for something new and unknown.

Dali was never known for his desire for a calm, traditional appearance. On the contrary, he was proud of his unusual antics and used them in every possible way to his advantage. For example, the artist wrote a book about his own mustache, calling it “antennas for the perception of art.”

In an effort to impress, Dali decided to spend one of his own meetings in a diving suit, as a result of which he almost suffocated.

Dali Salvador put his creativity above all else. The artist gained fame in the most unexpected, strangest ways imaginable. He bought dollar bills for $2, then sold a book about this action for a lot of money. The artist defended the right of his installations to exist by destroying them and bringing them to the police.

Salvador Dali left behind his most famous paintings in huge quantities. However, as well as memories of his strange, incomprehensible character and worldview.

Thousands of books and songs have been written about Salvador Dali, many films have been made, but it is not necessary to watch, read and listen to all this - after all, there are his paintings. The brilliant Spaniard proved by his own example that a whole universe lives in every person and immortalized himself in canvases that will be in the center of attention of all mankind for centuries to come. Dali has long been not just an artist, but something like a global cultural meme. How do you like the opportunity to feel like a tabloid newspaper reporter and delve into the dirty laundry of a genius?

1. Grandfather's suicide

In 1886, Gal Josep Salvador, Dali's paternal grandfather, took his own life. The grandfather of the great artist suffered from depression and mania of persecution, and in order to annoy everyone who was “watching” him, he decided to leave this mortal world.

One day he went out onto the balcony of his apartment on the third floor and began screaming that they had robbed him and tried to kill him. The arriving police were able to convince the unfortunate man not to jump from the balcony, but as it turned out, only for a while - six days later, Gal nevertheless threw himself from the balcony headfirst and died suddenly.

For obvious reasons, the Dali family tried to avoid wide publicity, so the suicide was hushed up. In the death report there was not a word about suicide, only a note that Gal died “from a traumatic brain injury,” so the suicide was buried according to Catholic rites. For a long time, relatives hid the truth about the death of their grandfather from Gala’s grandchildren, but the artist eventually learned about this unpleasant story.

2. Masturbation Addiction

As a teenager, Salvador Dali loved, so to speak, to compare penises with his classmates, and he called his own “small, pathetic and soft.” The early erotic experiences of the future genius did not end with these harmless pranks: somehow a pornographic novel fell into his hands and what struck him most was the episode where the main character boasted that he “could make a woman squeak like a watermelon.” The young man was so impressed by the power of the artistic image that, remembering this, he reproached himself for his inability to do the same with women.

In his autobiography “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali” (originally “The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dali”), the artist admits: “For a long time it seemed to me that I was impotent.” Probably, in order to overcome this oppressive feeling, Dali, like many boys of his age, engaged in masturbation, to which he was so addicted that throughout the life of a genius, masturbation was his main, and sometimes even the only, way of sexual satisfaction. At that time, it was believed that masturbation could lead a person to madness, homosexuality and impotence, so the artist was constantly in fear, but could not help himself.

3. Dali associated sex with rotting

One of the genius’s complexes arose due to the fault of his father, who once (on purpose or not) left a book on the piano, which was full of colorful photographs of male and female genitalia, disfigured by gangrene and other diseases. Having studied the photographs that enchanted and at the same time horrified him, Dali Jr. lost interest in contacts with the opposite sex for a long time, and sex, as he later admitted, began to be associated with rotting, decomposition and decay.

Of course, the artist’s attitude towards sex is noticeably reflected in his canvases: fears and motifs of destruction and decay (most often depicted in the form of ants) are found in almost every work. For example, in “The Great Masturbator,” one of his most significant paintings, there is a human face looking down, from which a woman “grows,” most likely based on Dali’s wife and muse Gala. A locust sits on the face (the genius felt an inexplicable horror of this insect), along whose abdomen ants crawl - a symbol of decomposition. The woman's mouth is pressed against the groin of the man standing next to him, which hints at oral sex, while cuts on the man's legs are bleeding, indicating the artist's fear of castration, which he experienced as a child.

4. Love is evil

In his youth, one of Dali's closest friends was the famous Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. There were rumors that Lorca even tried to seduce the artist, but Dali himself denied this. Many contemporaries of the great Spaniards said that for Lorca, the love union of the painter and Elena Dyakonova, later known as Gala Dali, was an unpleasant surprise - supposedly the poet was convinced that the genius of surrealism could only be happy with him. It must be said that despite all the gossip, there is no exact information about the nature of the relationship between the two outstanding men.

Many researchers of the artist’s life agree that before meeting Gala, Dali remained a virgin, and although at that time Gala was married to someone else, had an extensive collection of lovers, and was, after all, ten years older than him, the artist was fascinated by this woman. Art critic John Richardson wrote of her: “One of the nastiest wives a successful modern artist could choose. It’s enough to get to know her to start hating her.” At one of the artist’s first meetings with Gala, he asked what she wanted from him. This, without a doubt, extraordinary woman replied: “I want you to kill me” - after this, Dali immediately fell in love with her, completely and irrevocably.

Dali's father couldn't stand his son's passion, mistakenly believing that she was using drugs and forcing the artist to sell them. The genius insisted on continuing the relationship, as a result of which he was left without his father’s inheritance and went to Paris to his beloved, but before that, as a sign of protest, he shaved his head bald and “buried” his hair on the beach.

5. Voyeur genius

It is believed that Salvador Dali received sexual satisfaction from watching others make love or masturbate. The brilliant Spaniard even spied on his own wife while she was taking a bath, admitted to the “exciting experience of a voyeur” and called one of his paintings “Voyeur”.

Contemporaries whispered that the artist organized orgies at his home every week, but if this is true, most likely he himself did not take part in them, content with the role of spectator. One way or another, Dali’s antics shocked and irritated even depraved bohemians - art critic Brian Sewell, describing his acquaintance with the artist, said that Dali asked him to take off his pants and masturbate, lying in the fetal position under the statue of Jesus Christ in the painter’s garden. According to Sewell, Dali made similar strange requests to many of his guests.

Singer Cher recalls that she and her husband Sonny once went to visit the artist, and he looked like he had just participated in an orgy. When Cher began to twirl in her hands the beautifully painted rubber wand that interested her, the genius solemnly informed her that it was a vibrator.

6. George Orwell: “He is sick and his paintings are disgusting”

In 1944, the famous writer dedicated an essay to the artist entitled “The Privilege of Spiritual Shepherds: Notes on Salvador Dali,” in which he expressed the opinion that the artist’s talent makes people consider him impeccable and perfect.

Orwell wrote: "If Shakespeare returned to the land tomorrow and found that his favorite leisure pastime was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go on like that just because he is capable of writing another one." King Lear." You need the ability to keep both facts in your head at the same time: the fact that Dali is a good draftsman, and the fact that he is a disgusting person.”

The writer also notes the pronounced necrophilia and coprophagia (craving for excrement) present in Dali’s paintings. One of the most famous works of this kind is considered to be “The Gloomy Game”, written in 1929 - at the bottom of the masterpiece is a man stained with feces. Similar details are present in the painter’s later works.

In his essay, Orwell concludes that “men like Dali are undesirable, and the society in which they can flourish is somehow flawed.” One might say that the writer himself admitted his unjustified idealism: after all, the human world has never been and will never be perfect, and Dali’s impeccable paintings are one of the clearest evidence of this.

7. "Hidden Faces"

Salvador Dali wrote his only novel in 1943, when he and his wife were in the United States. Among other things, the literary work produced by the artist contains descriptions of the antics of eccentric aristocrats in the Old World, engulfed in fire and drenched in blood, while the artist himself called the novel “an epitaph for pre-war Europe.”

If the artist’s autobiography can be considered a fantasy disguised as the truth, then “Hidden Faces” is more likely the truth disguised as fiction. In the book, which was sensational in its time, there is also such an episode - Adolf Hitler, who won the war, in his Eagle’s Nest residence, tries to brighten up his loneliness with priceless masterpieces of art from all over the world laid out around him, Wagner’s music plays, and the Fuhrer makes semi-delirious speeches about Jews and Jesus Christ.

Reviews of the novel were generally favorable, although a literary reviewer for The Times criticized the novel's whimsical style, excessive adjectives, and muddled plot. At the same time, for example, a critic from The Spectator magazine wrote about Dali’s literary experience: “It’s a psychotic mess, but I liked it.”

8. Beats, so... a genius?

The year 1980 became a turning point for the elderly Dali - the artist was paralyzed and, unable to hold a brush in his hands, he stopped painting. For a genius, this was akin to torture - he had not been balanced before, but now he began to lose his temper with or without reason, and besides, he was greatly irritated by the behavior of Gala, who spent the money she received from the sale of her brilliant husband’s paintings on young fans and lovers, and gave them gifts of her own. masterpieces, and also often disappeared from home for several days.

The artist began to beat his wife, so much so that one day he broke two of her ribs. To calm her husband down, Gala gave him Valium and other sedatives, and once gave Dali a large dose of a stimulant, which caused irreparable damage to the genius’s psyche.

The painter’s friends organized the so-called “Rescue Committee” and admitted him to the clinic, but by that time the great artist was a pitiful sight - a thin, shaking old man, constantly in fear that Gala would leave him for the actor Jeffrey Fenholt, who played the leading role in the Broadway play production of the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar”.

9. Instead of skeletons in the closet - the corpse of his wife in the car

On June 10, 1982, Gala left the artist, but not for the sake of another man - the 87-year-old muse of the genius died in a hospital in Barcelona. According to her will, Dali was going to bury his beloved in the Pubol castle in Catalonia, which he owned, but for this, her body had to be removed without legal red tape and without attracting unnecessary attention from the press and public.

The artist found a way out, creepy but witty - he ordered Gala to be dressed, “put” the corpse in the back seat of her Cadillac, and a nurse stood nearby supporting the body. The deceased was taken to Pubol, embalmed and dressed in her favorite red Dior dress, and then buried in the castle crypt. The inconsolable husband spent several nights kneeling in front of the grave and exhausted from horror - their relationship with Gala was complicated, but the artist could not imagine how he would live without her. Dali lived in the castle almost until his death, sobbed for hours and said that he saw various animals - he began to hallucinate.

10. Infernal invalid

Just over two years after the death of his wife, Dali again experienced a real nightmare - on August 30, the bed in which the 80-year-old artist was sleeping caught fire. The cause of the fire was a short circuit in the castle's electrical wiring, believed to have been caused by the old man constantly fiddling with the maid's bell button attached to his pajamas.

When a nurse came running at the sound of the fire, she found the paralyzed genius lying at the door in a semi-fainting state and immediately rushed to give him mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration, although he tried to fight back and called her “bitch” and “murderer.” The genius survived, but received second degree burns.

After the fire, Dali became completely unbearable, although he had not previously had an easy character. A publicist from Vanity Fair noted that the artist turned into a “disabled man from hell”: he deliberately soiled bed linen, scratched nurses’ faces and refused to eat or take medications.

After recovery, Salvador Dali moved his theater-museum to the neighboring town of Figueres, where he died on January 23, 1989. The Great Artist once said that he hoped to be resurrected, so he wanted his body to be frozen after death, but instead, according to his will, he was embalmed and walled up in the floor of one of the rooms of the theater-museum, where it remains to this day.