{"id":1649,"date":"2014-03-29T02:14:45","date_gmt":"2014-03-29T02:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wonderfuldarkness.com\/?p=1649"},"modified":"2014-03-30T20:53:46","modified_gmt":"2014-03-30T20:53:46","slug":"salvador-dali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wonderfuldarkness.com\/?p=1649","title":{"rendered":"Salvador Dal\u00ed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Salvador<\/a><\/h2>\n

Introduction to Dal\u00ed<\/h2>\n

Salvador Dal\u00ed was a Spanish surrealist known for his imaginative and eccentric views and lifestyle. He was born on May 11th<\/sup>, 1904 and died at the age of eighty-four on January 23rd<\/sup>, 1989. Dal\u00ed was best known for his painting but was also involved in film and theater, photography and writing, fashion and architecture. He was also a great sculptor and worked extensively in the graphic arts.<\/p>\n

Diminutive Biography<\/h2>\n

When he was five, Dal\u00ed was taken to his brother’s grave and was told by his parents that he was his brother’s reincarnation, a concept which he came to believe. Of his brother, whom shared his first name, Dal\u00ed said, we “resembled each other like two drops of water, but we had different reflections.” He “was probably a first version of myself but conceived too much in the absolute.”<\/p>\n

His mother died of breast cancer when Dal\u00ed was 16 years old; he later said his mother’s death “was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshiped her… I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul.”<\/p>\n

\"Diego<\/a>In 1926 he made his first visit to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso, who the young Dal\u00ed revered. Picasso had already heard favorable reports about Dal\u00ed from Joan Mir\u00f3. As he developed his own style over the next few years, Dal\u00ed made a number of works heavily influenced by Picasso and Mir\u00f3.<\/p>\n

\"Gala<\/a>Dal\u00ed grew a flamboyant mustache, influenced by 17th-century Spanish master painter Diego Vel\u00e1zquez. The mustache became an iconic trademark of his appearance for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n

In August 1929, Dal\u00ed met his lifelong and primary muse, inspiration, and future wife Gala. In the early 1930s, Dal\u00ed started to sign his paintings with his and her name and stated, it “is mostly with your blood, Gala, that I paint my pictures”.<\/p>\n

Chronology of Select Works & Contributions<\/h2>\n

Dal\u00ed\u2019s painting was greatly inspired by Renaissance masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Giulio Clovio and Giovanni Bellini but he was involved in many of the fine arts in addition to graphic art including etchings and lithographs.
<\/b><\/p>\n

Theatre<\/h3>\n

In 1927, Dal\u00ed designed scenery for Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca’s romantic play Mariana Pineda<\/i>; thus contributing to the theatrical arts. Later he would create set designs for Labyrinth<\/i> in 1941 and The Three-Cornered Hat<\/i> in 1949.<\/p>\n

\"Un<\/a>Film<\/h3>\n

Dal\u00ed and Luis Bu\u00f1uel produced a short film called Un Chien Andalou<\/i> in 1929 that consisted of seventeen minutes of bizarre and surreal images that were designed to not mean anything at all. A straight razor is placed by a woman’s eye which is then slit open, a small cloud formation obscures the moon, a woman pokes at a severed hand in the street with a cane, a man drags two grand pianos containing dead and rotting donkeys and live priests and a man’s hand has a hole in the palm from which ants emerge. A shot of differently striped objects is repeatedly used to connect scenes.<\/p>\n

Painting<\/h3>\n

The Persistence of Memory<\/i> was completed in August of 1931. Dal\u00ed indicated that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, as many believed, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert cheese melting in the sun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"The<\/a> \"The<\/a><\/p>\n

He returned to the theme of this painting with the variation The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory<\/i> in 1954. Dal\u00ed had been greatly interested in nuclear physics since the first atomic bomb explosions of August 1945, and described the atom as his “favorite food for thought”. Recognizing that matter was made up of atoms which did not touch each other, he sought to replicate this in his art at the time, with items suspended and not interacting with each other.<\/p>\n

\"Galatea<\/a>A great example of this style was his earlier work in 1952, Galatea of the Spheres<\/i>. This painting depicts Gala Dal\u00ed, Salvador Dal\u00ed’s wife and muse, as pieced together through a series of spheres. The name Galatea refers to a sea-nymph of classical mythology renowned for her virtue, and may also refer to the statue beloved by its creator, Pygmalion.<\/p>\n

The Sacrament of the Last Supper<\/i> is another well-known painting by Salvador Dal\u00ed. Completed in 1955, this work of art took nine months to finish.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first Holy Communion on Earth is conceived as a sacred rite of the greatest happiness for humanity. This rite is expressed with plastic means and not with literary ones. My ambition was to incorporate to Zurbar\u00e1n’s mystical realism the experimental creativeness of modern painting in my desire to make it classic.\u201d<\/p>\n

~Salvador Dal\u00ed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Hidden<\/a>Writing<\/h3>\n

In Hidden Faces<\/i> (1944), Dal\u00ed describes the lives and loves of a group of aristocratic characters who, in their beauty, luxury, and extravagance, symbolize the decadent Europe of the 1930s. The story of the tangled lives of the protagonists, from the February riots of 1934 in Paris to the closing days of the war is Dal\u00ed\u2019s only attempt at an approach to a literary career.<\/p>\n

Photography<\/h3>\n

Dal\u00ed collaborated with many talented artists such as Man Ray, Brassa\u00ef, Cecil Beaton, and Philippe Halsman. While working with the later, the famous Dali Atomicus<\/i> was taken in 1948. It took 28 takes to get the desired effect and the steps taken have been described as follows:<\/p>\n