A few dirty secrets of El Salvador were given. Salvador Dali: the best works of the artist Addiction to masturbation

“Drawing is the honesty of art. The possibility of deception is excluded: either it is “good” or “bad”. .

Salvador Felipe Jacinto was given to Domenech by the Marquis of Pubol(May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), popularly known as Salvador Dali, was born in Figueras (Spain) and became one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

His image in art is a bright character. Every second of his life was dedicated to drawing attention to himself. Any of his works is an explosion of delight and indignation in society. Dali was known as a Surrealist, although much of his work is fundamentally different from most Surrealist artists. This fact allowed Dali without reason to proclaim "Surrealism is I", which became a step for raising surrealism to new heights.

Salvador Dali was a unique artist. surreal paintings of Salvador and eccentric behavior gave Dali incredibly highly skilled craftsmanship in a variety of other disciplines. His art fluctuated from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, from realism to surrealism, from chaos to harmony. Dali was a versatile artist whose art is rich in symbols, many of which were understood only by Salvador and fit his sublime style. To understand Dali as an artist, you need to see more than one piece of his work. Dali never limited himself to painting alone. His demonstrated talent in sculpture and painting shows another side of him. creative life as an excellent director, screenwriter and actor.

Every work of art Dali, it's a way to tell a different story, and discover a different side of yourself. Dali believed that life itself is a work of art, namely the work that needs to be mastered and conquered every day. For Salvador Dali this was of great importance, which he showed in art form– from the primitive to the extraordinary artistic Salvadoran heyday in everything.

Having created his own paranoid-critical method, Dali was able to transform a pure image of ideas into an environment of unconscious irrational and impulsive chaos. He described it as "a spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systemic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delusional phenomena." Through his paranoid-critical method Dali the whole world opened up in an infinite number of possibilities.

Paintings by Salvador Dali undoubtedly brought him the greatest fame. With his eccentric character and irrepressible energy, the small Dali irritated loved ones, and sometimes led to anger. Frequent whims and tantrums brought my father Dali in a rage, but the mother, going against her husband, forgave her son for all his antics, even the most unbearable and disgusting, and tried her best to please her beloved son. As a result, the father became a kind of embodiment of evil, and the mother, on the contrary, became a symbol of good.

Already at the age of ten years young Salvador Dali drew his first drawing "" (1914), although his attempts at drawing appeared when he was six years old. This small impressionist landscape was painted by him. oil paints on a wooden board. Already at the age of 14 Dali were without a doubt the greatest ability of the draftsman. Early painting fourteen years old Dali « Boat "El Son"” (1919) attracts the eye with its quirkiness. The image is like a picture from a cartoon. A man floats on the sea, holding an oar in his hand. The sail on the boat seems like a huge white fish that is rapidly moving through the water. The drawing looks like it happens in the comics. This is a very original portrait, where some marine themes are visible. Dali that have a recurrence in his career.

In November 1925, the first personal exhibition of works Salvador Dali in the Dalmau Gallery, where 27 paintings and 5 drawings of the great novice genius were presented. The school of painting in which he studied gradually disappointed him, and in 1926 Dali was expelled from the academy for his freethinking.

The desire to capture the world and improve its forms in early works Dali had a profound effect on realism. Soon he came under the influence of new trends in the developing art - Dadaism and Cubism. At this time, his paintings "" (1922) and "" (1927) make it clear that these are his experiments of Cubism with Expressionism. Even then, he still remained true to his early pressing technical connection. " Basket with bread"(1926) - a wonderful example of real feelings and abilities Dali. Here you can see that the artist is not too far from his realistic roots, even when he was close to Surrealism. Having fallen under the spell of this direction, his life changed forever.




1926. Oil on canvas.

Having gone through all these stages of the creative desire to study painting, Dali has impeccable technique. This is especially evident in his surrealistic painting "" (1931). "" like a shock wave passed through the entire territory of the artistic community. With this work Dali not only declared himself a true Surrealist, but he also declared himself as one of the contemporaries of art of great magnitude.

The picture gives a feeling of peace. Melting watches become inexplicably soft in this harsh and endless space of sleep, while hard metal attracts ants like sugar. Here time loses all meaning. The mutated creature depicted in the center of the picture seems familiar, and at the same time, alien. Long sexy eyelashes, as if disturbing insects. Imagination Dali, his expressed inner world in the picture, captivates the viewer with crazy fantasies. "The difference between a madman and me," Salvador said, "is that I am not mad." The picture especially shocks the world with unforgettable images of melted clocks.

Drawings and paintings Salvador Dali presented in the most prestigious museums in the world, and some best work are in private art collections. In his books " secret life Salvador Dali" And " Diary of a Genius» secret thoughts and ideas of the artist's consciousness are expressed. He painted not only for his books. A brilliant example of this is the illustration for the play " Macbeth» Shakespeare. Incredibly detailed work of art with monstrously abstruse large-caliber illustrations.

Entire life Dali was unique, especially unique was his union with Elena Dyakonova, ex-wife of Paul Eluard and lover of Max Ernst. This couple felt and understood each other. For Salvador Dali Gala became not only a wife, but also a favorite model, and the divine muse of his inspiration. Gala lived only the life of Salvador, and Salvador admired her.

By 1959 Dali won the title of great artist. His paintings were worth a huge fortune. His admirers and lovers of luxury bought masterpieces for crazy money. Have paintings in your collection Dali considered a great luxury. While Dali and Gala were able to really equip their modest hut in Port Lligat, bought in 1930 from local fishermen into a cozy home.

In the late 60s, a vibrant and passionate relationship between Dali and Galoi fade away. Dali buys Gale his own castle. After breaking up with Gala, Dali never stopped creating.

There is something honest in his draft works, in contrast to painting and graphics. They can't hide mistakes, but they don't have many flaws either. drawing drawings Dali still kept the most high level drawing technique. For example, in " portrait of Mrs. Jack Warner" and in " portrait of Colonel Jack Warner» gentle movements of lines and compositions are visible. These are preliminary ideas for work. Here he sketched handwritten notes of his thoughts at the time of the drawings.


Canvas natural cotton for paintings and photos, density 380 g/m2

1951. Oil on canvas


The drawings are more like works of art than drafts. Dali was so brilliant that if you were lucky enough to get his autograph, you can say you got a work of art. Dali was a famous draftsman of his autographs. He wanted to be admired in order to leave behind something stylish and of high quality.

Dali once said: “Drawing is the honesty of art. The possibility of deception is excluded: either it is “good” or “bad”. Dali believed that a real artist should not only be able to draw, but draw well. True talent lies in how well an artist is able to express his thoughts and feelings to the world. Dali spent endless hours working with a pencil sketch, only to soon move on to a brush stroke, creating future masterpieces.

Currently drawings Salvador Dali are of great value in the world art markets, auctions and exhibitions. Many of his drawings cost more than one thousand dollars. As a rule, these drawings are his studies, his initial plans for future works.

Despite his artistic talent, Dali created an extensive collection of sculptures. Some of the larger ones he created stand around the world in places like London (at the foot of the famous Ferris wheel, the London eye), Singapore, and throughout France. Possibly his most famous surreal sculpture « Lobster phone”, created by him in 1936 together with the surrealist artist Edward James. Among the sculptor Dali worked most of his life, thereby trying to bring his ideas to the third dimension, and give his paintings more life.

Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso - two great Spaniards - left in the shadow of their world fame many masters of art of the twentieth century. No one has been written about, talked about, argued about as much as about them; no one can compare with them in the number of books, albums, brochures, articles published about the work of these two titans.

It would seem that nothing foreshadowed in early works young El Salvador of the appearance of a grandiose talent, eclipsing everything that one could imagine with its shocking, explosive, miraculous art. There is no such force that even now could be opposed to his phantasmagoria.

The first retrospective exhibition of Dali's works from the collection of the Salvador Dali Gala Foundation. Figueres" in Moscow, in the halls of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin for the first time presented his work to the Russian public on such a large scale. It became a holiday, a discovery of the phenomenon of an outstanding master for all admirers, adherents and even recent detractors of "surrealism".

So much has already been written about him that hardly anyone would take the liberty of adding something new to the tens of thousands of pages of already printed texts, but still Dali's work is inexhaustible, it remains a mystery, the mystery of "one" genius. For a sensitive heart and an inquisitive mind, it is an inexhaustible source of fantasy and inspiration. More than once we will ask ourselves the question: what is the phenomenon of his art, fate, personality, and each of us will look for our own answer.

The universal gift of Salvador Dali, the purpose of the talent of the oracle and the skill of the demiurge plunged into confusion, caused delight and anger, instilled hope and disappointment at the same time.

Let us take some liberties in answering the endless number of questions that arise about this Don Quixote of the twentieth century regarding his phenomenon, what is the secret, one of the secrets of Dali's genius. It seems to me that in the life of the great Catalan, the most significant role was played by his Muse - Gala - Elena Dmitrievna Dyakonova (nee). It was to her, an extraordinary Russian woman, that he, by his own admission, owed everything that made him the one and only genius among all other contemporaries. By her appearance in Dali’s life, she, Gala, as her first husband, the poet Paul Eluard, which literally translates from French into Russian means “holiday”, awakened and sharpened in him supersensible intuition, multiplied by complexes, instilled faith in his unique unsurpassedness and messianic purpose. Most likely, she introduced him to literary heritage N.V. Gogol and F.M. Dostoevsky, about the subsequent influence of which one can only guess and put forward the most incredible versions. She was destined to become for a genius not only a model, mother, wife and lover, but also his Alter Ego, a full-fledged co-author, as eloquently evidenced by a double signature Gala Dali, appearing in his paintings. Elena Dyakonova developed in him the miraculous gift of a virtuoso draftsman, master of composition and color; perhaps many of the motives, plots and scenarios of his paintings were suggested by her. But this is only an assumption.

The religious spirit and rational, materialistic consciousness coexisted organically in it; he was a unique improviser and prudent pragmatist. With his installations, art objects, stage actions, picturesque and graphic images, Dali did not entertain the audience, but hypnotized it. In his works, he turned the ironic plot into the grotesque. The incomparable colorist and draftsman constantly surprised the audience with irrepressible imagination and virtuosity in the implementation of an always intriguing idea. He did not flatter anyone, with the exception of that Muse, the Madonna, whom he idolized all his life, although in his environment were the most worthy people of the whole era, such as Pablo Picasso, Luis Buñuel, Garcia Lorca, Guillaume Appolinaire, Rene Magritte, Andre Breton ...

The microcosm of Dali's early, small, and sometimes miniature in format works contains an immense, universal abyss of the author's feelings and thoughts, exciting the imagination with many associations. His creations are a brilliant example of an intellectual game of recklessness and, at the same time, deeply thought-out variations and formulas of a special philosophical sense and scale.

In my opinion, one of the striking characteristic signs of the unsurpassed, filigree professional skill of the artist is the opportunity for us not only mentally, but actually to increase almost to incredible limits both the miniature images of the painter and draftsman, and the smallest details his fantastic compositions.

Brutality and fragility, outrageousness and humility - this is all he is, a man with a sensitive and tender soul, for whom art was not just a form of absolute self-expression, but also a means of protection from obscurantism and hypocrisy, the omniscient servility of immoral morals and infallible sinners. His apparent audacity knew no bounds, he challenged everything that was alien to him, while remaining a person easily vulnerable. His Spanish temperament helped him fight both surrounding the world, and with their internal complexes.

The author of these lines was fortunate enough to be the first Russian art critic to write very modest monographic works, one of which was published in 1989, the other in 1992. Solely because of the courage shown by the publishing house "Knowledge" and "Respublika", and thanks to the huge, mass circulation for publications about art, they received fairly wide publicity. One of its joyful results was for me a correspondence acquaintance with Gala's own sister, Lydia Dmitrievna Dyakonova (marriedly Yarolimek). I mention this as a sign of memory and gratitude, and also in connection with the fact that she informed me in her letters about her meetings with Dali and her impressions of him.

I will allow myself to quote verbatim from her little message received from Vienna, where Lidia Dmitrievna lived: “Now there are many articles and brochures full of implausible stories, taking advantage of the fact that he was an unusually strange person and causing the most diverse reactions.” In her memoirs about Dali, Sister Gala noted his modesty, shyness and amazing responsiveness, which he showed in a family setting in relation to a few, but the people closest to his heart. “During our meetings in Paris and in Italy, he could be the sweetest and most common man". In these sincere words of not an outsider, as in her other statements, she shared with me her life impressions about the inner world of Salvador Dali, unknown to the majority, closed from prying eyes, which coincided with my speculation about him and his work.

The content of this more than modest dedication to "one genius" does not imply a description of the graphic and pictorial works presented in the Moscow exposition (by the way, in the brilliant design presentation of Boris Messerer). IN Lately many translated publications appeared about Dali's creative heritage, including books by his closest assistant, long years who worked with him, the main biographer of the great maestro - Robert Descharnes, as well as literary works the artist in excellent translations by Natalia Malinovskaya, which will fully satisfy the interest of the multi-million audience of Russian connoisseurs and art lovers.

The spiritual, philosophical, symbolic meaning of the work of Salvador Dali has a magical appeal, goes beyond the conventional boundaries of a particular time, not only because the world of images created by him is conditioned by the historical scale of artistic thinking, in which the vices and virtues of mankind, good and evil, beauty and ugliness are conjugated, generating an incredible, all-consuming energy of providence. Being a true creator, a genius, he possessed the ability to foresee and anticipate, created his own aesthetics of meanings, revived the art of past eras and became the forerunner of the art of the future. Declaring certain postulates in this text, we will not deceive ourselves in the impeccability of our own feelings and perception of myth and reality, reflecting the contradictory essence of the unknown and the known.

Dali's legacy is enormous, he showed himself in various epistases of holiness and the fall, in painting, graphics, sculpture, cinema and literature, in decorative arts and design, has become a comprehensive dramatic figure in the artistic culture of the twentieth century. His work was, is and will be unpredictable, not subject to formal, dispassionate retelling. What is the secret of the phenomenon of the doctrine of Dali's art - Time will tell.

"Historical surrealism" has become one of the most notable phenomena artistic culture of the past century. It captured a pronounced tendency to create a new mythology; he changed and expanded ideas about the possibilities and forms of perception modern man, had a direct impact on the evolutionary transformations in art, anticipated the emergence of the transavant-garde and the latest trends in postmodernism. The official chronology of the movement is limited to 1924-1968: from the opening of the Bureau of Surrealist Research and the publication of Andre Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism to the Prague Spring - in any case, these time limits are defined by Alain and Odette Virmo.

In their encyclopedic study “Masters of World Surrealism”, they wrote: “Surrealism, no doubt, like no other movement, left the deepest mark in the history of the twentieth century. It was absorbed, sometimes involuntarily, by several successive generations, having crossed the line of May 1968, on our entire planet. This is also evidenced by the work of domestic masters of painting, sculpture and graphics, who are by no means epigones, unconditional adherents of surrealism or bearers of its postulates. With regard to many of them, it is generally unjustified to speak of any direct influence of the concepts of "pure mental automatism", "paranoiac-critical doctrines" or other, conditional paraphernalia characteristic of the assessments of this movement. Of course, we find certain echoes with the legacy of Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte, Paul Delvaux, Victor Brauner, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Joan Miro in the works of a number of Russian artists of the post-war generation, which by no means means their direct connection with the surrealist tradition, but, on the contrary, testifies to the independent nature of such a phenomenon. An example of a special detached parallelism, independent of spectator associations and art criticism comparisons, are individual works such our masters as Alexander Rukavishnikov, Sergey Sharov, Andrey Kostin, Igor Makarevich, Andrey Esionov, Valery Maloletkov, Konstantin Khudyakov. The creativity of each of them is in itself deeply individual and separate from the general, collective tendencies. At the same time, we know many interesting and original authors who continue, asserting their role, to develop surrealist ideas, following well-known principles and canons, which does not detract from the merits of their art. This is Evgeny Shef (Sheffer), now living in Berlin; Viktor Krotov, based in Moscow and Paris; Sergei Chaikun, Sergei Potapov, Oleg Safronov, Alla Bedina, Mikhail Gorshunov, Yuri Yakovenko, Alexander Kalugin.

A predisposition to phantasmagoria, mysteries, buffoonery, the playful basis of creativity allows us to talk about a certain surrealistic vision of the world by Alexander Sitnikov, the mediated perception of reality in the works of Valery Vradiy with other threads connects the artist with this phenomenon in art, as well as Vladimir Lobanov, but in a completely different way. perspective.

In the artistic culture of Russia, one can find many brilliant examples of surrealism. figurative thinking, primarily in literature, in the legacy of N.V. Gogol, M.A. Bulgakov, Daniil Kharms. Perhaps it is here that one should look for the origins, the roots of interpretative pluralism, which was one of the motives for the emergence of surrealism as historical phenomenon on Russian soil.

Unlike foreign authors who cultivate various aspects, themes and techniques of "historical surrealism", Russian authors are dominated by other emotional and semantic dominants and associative series. Brutality, aggression - indispensable components of metaphysical, occult imagery in the work of the Western representatives of this movement - have actually been reduced to nothing by our masters. In the works of Russian carriers of surrealistic thinking, other subconscious motivations, sensations and premonitions predominate. Their sacred metapsychosis is associated with a special romantic sensitivity, a special intuitionism. In the work of domestic followers of surrealism, of course, there are dramatic metamorphoses, which are rather a confirmation of sacrifice not in the name, but in spite of the attitudes towards the mutation of spiritual consciousness, towards the destructive pathos of aggressive resistance to everything that exists. We have more sentimentalism, self-flagellation and detachment than instinctive submission of everyone and everything to some super-task.

The game culture, metaphor and grotesqueness of Russian art also bring into the surrealist strategy a taste of failed sensual expectations and desires, a kind of passive, otherworldly contemplation, although not excluding spontaneous demonism and courage.

The French literary critic, semiotician, philosopher J. Derrida argued: "The literal meaning does not exist, its "appearance" is a necessary function - and it should be analyzed as such in a system of differences and metaphors." Of course, to a greater extent these words refer to the study of literary texts, and yet the literary, linguistic, philosophical methodology for studying the material in this case seems to be acceptable for understanding the heritage of surrealist art, the key to interpreting the works created by its founders and followers.

In this regard, it is appropriate to recall the words of Salvador Dali. The great mystifier, myth and reality of art of the 20th century wrote: “...when the Renaissance wanted to imitate Immortal Greece, Raphael came out of it. Ingres wanted to imitate Raphael, from this came Ingres. Cezanne wanted to imitate Poussin - Cezanne turned out. Dali wanted to imitate Meissonier. OUT OF THIS IS DALI. Nothing comes of those who do not want to imitate anything.

And I want to know about it. After Pop Art and Op Art, Art Pompier will appear, but such art will be multiplied by everything that is of value, and by all, even the most insane, experiments in this grandiose tragedy called "Modern Art".

Surrealism, as a new phenomenon of artistic culture, has become a logical continuation of Dadaism, the search for a special metalanguage with which one could find an explanation or give an analysis of another language - the subject. One of the main historical merits of surrealism is that it united outstanding poets and artists, cinematographers and musicians around the declared ideas, who personify great era"storm and stress". These are Tristan Tzara and Antonin Artaud, Philippe Soupault and Andre Breton, Andre Suri and Luis Buñuel, Andre Masson and Alberto Giacometti, Hans Arp and Eric Satie, Yves Tanguy and Pablo Neruda, Francis Picabia and Pablo Picasso, Paul Eluard and Suze Takiguchi, El Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, Max Ernst and Man Ray, Wilfredo Lahm and Paul Klee, Pavel Chelishchev and Fritz Van den Berghe, whose names are perceived as synonymous with the brightest luminaries in the sky of art of the past century, shining on the horizons of egoistic globalization of their own individualism. We also include our compatriots among them, according to the art criticism classification, however, they were far from surrealistic sermons), such as Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Pavel Filonov. “What is not born internally,” Kandinsky wrote, “is stillborn.” It is this thesis that confirms the viability of surrealism as a timeless phenomenon, since the entire “avant-garde” is nothing more than intellectual game no rules.

Let us recall Salvador Dali and his works again: time has shown an unfading interest in the personality and work of the Spanish genius in the new millennium. Convincing confirmation was the exhibition of the master's works, which were visited by hundreds of thousands of spectators. Among them is the exposition at the Pushkin Museum named after A.S. Pushkin in Moscow in 2011, the largest retrospective of works by S. Dali at the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2012-2013, the Paris exhibition of 22 street artists from different countries in the Dali Museum in Montmartre in 2014-2015, at which featured little-known works by contemporary artists Fred Calmets, Jérôme Menage, Arnaud Rabier, Valeria Attinelli and other representatives of street art.

The words of Andre Malraux are true: “We exist to live, art - to come to life” - to come to life in our imagination, subconscious, memory, to be in demand. Just as Dali was inspired by the images created by Bernini, Vermeer of Delft, Velasquez, Meissonier, Millet, so the new generations of artists for whom he remains an idol will always admire and be surprised by his fantastic mirages, mysteries, discover in them for themselves and for the world the infinite depth of Genius.

Exhibition to open in Erarta from May 25 bronze sculptures famous surrealist Salvador Dali. The gallery brought a collection of Beniamino Levi, a friend and patron of Dali. It was he who offered the artist to cast fantasy images from his paintings in bronze. We tell you what to see in the exhibition and how to understand the artist's works.

"Adam and Eve"

One of the earliest (among the presented) works. On paper, the original was made in gouache in 1968, and the sculpture was cast in 1984. Dali portrays the most dramatic moment in Eden: Eve offers Adam a taste of the forbidden fruit. He, not yet knowing how his fall into sin will turn out for mankind, raises his hand in amazement and indecision. Aware of the impending expulsion from paradise, the serpent tries to console the doomed (and soon mortal) people and coils itself into a heart shape, reminding Adam and Eve that they still have love. And she is something whole, which is always more than the amount individual parts.


"Nobility of Time"

One of the most replicated images invented by Dali: the clock is thrown over the branch of a dead tree. The surrealist's time is not linear - it merges with the cosmos. The softness of the watch also hints at the psychological perception of time: when we are bored or uncomfortable, it goes slower. The limp clock no longer shows time, no longer measures its passage. So, the speed of our time depends only on us.

The clock falls on a dead tree whose branches have already spawned new life, and the roots wound around the stone. The tree trunk also serves as a support for the watch. The term "crown watch" in English language also means a mechanical device that allows you to set the hands and wind the watch. But according to Dali's watch, it is invariable - it is impossible to establish it. Without movement, the "crown" becomes royal, which adorns the watch and indicates that time does not serve people, but dominates them. He is accompanied by two recurring fantastic symbols: a contemplating angel and a woman wrapped in a shawl. Time reigns over both art and reality.


"Alice in Wonderland"

Like Carroll's heroine, Dali, armed creative imagination, traveled through difficult and long road in the land of dreams. The artist was attracted by the incredible plot and extravagant characters of the fairy tale. Alice - eternal child, capable of comprehending the absurd logic of both Wonderland and Beyond. In sculpture, her skipping rope has been transformed into a braided cord, symbolizing everyday life. Roses blossomed on her hands and in her hair, personifying female beauty and eternal youth. And the peplum dress is reminiscent of ancient examples of the perfection of form.


"Tribute to fashion"

Dali's relationship with high fashion began in the 1930s through his work with Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli and Vogue magazine and continued throughout his life. The head of Venus, frozen in the pose of a supermodel, is decorated with roses - a symbol of innocence. Her face is featureless, allowing the fan to imagine the face they wish. He is a "dandy" and stands in front of her on one knee.


"Adoration of Terpsichore"

The muse of dance in the interpretation of Dali creates two mirror images: a soft figure is opposed to a hard and frozen one. The absence of facial features emphasizes the symbolic sound of the composition. The dancer with flowing classical forms represents Grace and the unconscious, while the angular, cubist second figure speaks of the ever-growing and chaotic rhythm of life.


"Snail and Angel"

The sculpture refers to the artist's meeting with Sigmund Freud, whom he considered his spiritual father. Psychoanalytic ideas that influenced Dali in the early stages of the development of surrealism are reflected in many works. The snail, perched on the seat of a bicycle that was not far from Freud's house, struck Dali's imagination. He saw in her a human head - the very founder of psychoanalysis.

Dali was obsessed with the image of a snail, because it contains a paradoxical combination of softness (the body of an animal) with hardness (its shell). Therefore, the generally accepted symbol of idle pastime receives wings from him and easily moves on the waves. And the messenger of the gods, capable of developing unlimited speed, for a short moment sat on the back of a snail, endowing it with the gift of movement.


"Vision of an Angel"

Salvador Dali makes sense of a classic religious image. The thumb from which life arises (tree branches) symbolizes the power and dominion of the Absolute. On the right side of the deity is humanity: a man in his prime vitality. On the left side - an angel, symbolizing the spirit of contemplation; his wings rest on a crutch. Although man is united with God, divine knowledge transcends his own.

Surrealism is the complete freedom of a human being and the right to dream. I am not a surrealist, I am surrealism, - S. Dali.

The formation of Dali's artistic skill took place in the era of early modernity, when his contemporaries largely represented such new artistic movements as expressionism and cubism.

In 1929, the young artist joined the Surrealists. This year marked an important turn in his life as Salvador Dali met Gala. She became his mistress, wife, muse, model and main inspiration.

Since he was a brilliant draftsman and colorist, Dali drew much inspiration from the old masters. But he used extravagant forms and inventive ways to compose an entirely new, modern and innovative style of art. His paintings are distinguished by the use of double images, ironic scenes, optical illusions, dream landscapes and deep symbolism.

Throughout his creative life, Dali was never limited to one direction. He worked with oils and watercolors, created drawings and sculptures, films and photographs. Even the variety of forms of performance was not alien to the artist, including the creation jewelry and other works of applied art. As a screenwriter, Dali collaborated with the famous director Luis Buñuel, who made the films The Golden Age and The Andalusian Dog. They displayed unrealistic scenes, reminiscent of the revived paintings of a surrealist.

The prolific and extremely gifted master left a huge legacy for future generations of artists and art lovers. Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation launched an online project Catalog Raisonné of Salvador Dali for a complete scientific cataloging of the paintings created by Salvador Dali between 1910 and 1983. The catalog consists of five sections divided according to the timeline. It was conceived not only to provide comprehensive information about the artist's work, but also to determine the authorship of works, since Salvador Dali is one of the most forged painters.

These 17 examples of his surrealistic paintings testify to the fantastic talent, imagination and skill of the eccentric Salvador Dali.

1. "Ghost of Vermeer of Delft, which can be used as a table", 1934

This small picture with quite a long original title embodies Dali's admiration for the great 17th-century Flemish master, Jan Vermeer. Vermeer's self-portrait is executed taking into account Dali's surrealistic vision.

2. "The Great Masturbator", 1929

The painting depicts the internal struggle of feelings caused by the attitude towards sexual intercourse. This perception of the artist arose as an awakened childhood memory when he saw a book left by his father, open to a page depicting genitals affected by venereal diseases.

3. "Giraffe on fire", 1937

The artist completed this work before moving to the USA in 1940. Although the master claimed that the painting was apolitical, it, like many others, reflects the deep and unsettling feelings of unease and horror that Dali must have experienced during the turbulent period between the two world wars. A certain part reflects his internal struggle regarding the Spanish Civil War, and also refers to Freud's method of psychological analysis.

4. "The Face of War", 1940

The agony of war is also reflected in the work of Dali. He believed that his painting should contain omens of war, which we see in a deadly head stuffed with skulls.

5. "Sleep", 1937

It depicts one of the surreal phenomena - a dream. This is a fragile, unstable reality in the world of the subconscious.

6. Appearance of a face and a bowl of fruit on the seashore, 1938

This fantastic painting is especially interesting, since the author uses double images in it, endowing the image itself with a multi-level meaning. Metamorphoses, amazing juxtapositions of objects and hidden elements characterize Dali's surrealist paintings.

7. The Persistence of Memory, 1931

This is perhaps the most recognizable surreal painting Salvador Dali, who embodies softness and hardness, symbolizes the relativity of space and time. To a large extent, it relies on Einstein's theory of relativity, although Dali said that the idea for the picture was born at the sight of Camembert cheese melted in the sun.

8. The Three Sphinxes of Bikini Island, 1947

This surreal depiction of Bikini Atoll evokes the memory of the war. Three symbolic sphinxes occupy different planes: a human head, a split tree and a mushroom of a nuclear explosion, speaking of the horrors of war. The painting explores the relationship between three subjects.

9. "Galatea with spheres", 1952

The portrait of Dali's wife is presented through an array of spherical shapes. Gala is like a portrait of the Madonna. The artist, inspired by science, elevated Galatea above the tangible world to the upper etheric layers.

10. Melted Clock, 1954

Another depiction of a time-measuring object has been given an ethereal softness that is not typical of a hard pocket watch.

11. “My naked wife, contemplating her own flesh, which has turned into a staircase, into three vertebrae of a column, into the sky and into architecture”, 1945

Gala from the back. This wonderful image became one of the most eclectic works of Dali, where classics and surrealism, calmness and strangeness combined.

12. "Soft construction with boiled beans", 1936

The second name of the picture is “Premonition of the Civil War”. It depicts the alleged horrors of the Spanish Civil War, as the artist painted it six months before the conflict began. This was one of Salvador Dali's forebodings.

13. "The Birth of Liquid Desires", 1931-32

We see one example of a paranoid-critical approach to art. Images of father and possibly mother are mixed with a grotesque, unreal image of a hermaphrodite in the middle. The picture is filled with symbolism.

14. "The Riddle of Desire: My mother, my mother, my mother", 1929

This work, created on Freudian principles, became an example of Dali's relationship with his mother, whose distorted body appears in the Dalinian desert.

15. Untitled - Fresco painting design for Helena Rubinstein, 1942

The image was created for the interior decoration of the premises by order of Helena Rubinstein. This is a frankly surreal picture from the world of fantasy and dreams. The artist was inspired by classical mythology.

16. "Sodom self-satisfaction of an innocent maiden", 1954

The painting depicts a female figure and an abstract background. The artist explores the issue of repressed sexuality, which follows from the title of the work and the phallic forms that often appear in Dali's work.

17. Geopolitical Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, 1943

The artist expressed his skepticism by painting this painting while in the United States. The shape of the ball seems to be a symbolic incubator of the "new" man, the man of the "new world".

Today, May 11, is the birthday of the great Spanish painter and sculptor Salvador Dali . His legacy will forever remain with us, because in his works, many find a piece of themselves - that very "madness", without which life would be boring and monotonous.

« Surrealism is me", - shamelessly stated the artist, and one cannot but agree with him. All his works are imbued with the spirit of surrealism - both paintings and photographs, which he created with unprecedented skill. Dali proclaimed complete freedom from any aesthetic or moral coercion and went to the very limits in any creative experiment. He did not hesitate to implement the most provocative ideas and wrote everything from love and the sexual revolution, history and technology to society and religion.

great masturbator

The face of war

Atom splitting

Hitler's riddle

Christ of Saint Juan de la Cruz

Dali began to take an early interest in art and took private painting lessons from the artist while still at school Nunez , professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. Then at school fine arts at the Academy of Arts, he became close to the literary and artistic circles of Madrid - in particular, with Luis Buñuel And Federico Garcia Lorca . However, he did not stay at the Academy for a long time - he was expelled for some too bold ideas, which, however, did not prevent him from organizing the first small exhibition of his works and quickly becoming one of the most famous artists of Catalonia.

young women

Self portrait with Raphael neck

Basket with bread

Young woman seen from behind

After that Dali meets Gala, which became his muse of surrealism". Arriving to Salvador Dali with her husband, she immediately inflamed with a passion for the artist and left her husband for the sake of a genius. Dali but, absorbed in his feelings, as if he did not even notice that his "muse" did not come alone. Gala becomes his life partner and source of inspiration. She also became a bridge connecting the genius with the entire avant-garde community - her tact and gentleness allowed him to maintain at least some kind of relationship with his colleagues. The image of the beloved is reflected in many works Dali .

Portrait of Gala with two lamb ribs balancing on her shoulder

My wife, naked, looks at her own body, which has become a ladder, three vertebrae of a column, the sky and architecture

Galarina

Naked Dali, contemplating five ordered bodies, turning into carpuscles, from which Leda Leonardo is unexpectedly created, impregnated with the face of Gala

Of course, if we talk about painting Dali , it is impossible not to recall his most famous works:

A dream inspired by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate, a moment before awakening

The Persistence of Memory

flaming giraffe

Swans reflected in elephants

A malleable structure with boiled beans (Premonition of Civil War)

anthropomorphic locker

Sodomy self-gratification of an innocent maiden

Evening spider... hope

The ghost of Vermeer of Delft, capable of serving as a table

sculptures Dali brought his surrealistic talent to a new level - they jumped from the plane of the canvas into three-dimensional space, taking shape and additional volume. Most of the works have become intuitively familiar to the viewer - the master used in them the same images and ideas as in his canvases. To create sculptures Dali I had to spend several hours sculpting in wax, and then creating molds for casting bronze figures. Some of them were then cast in an enlarged size.

Among other things, Dali was an excellent photographer, and in the age of the very beginning of the development of photography, together with Philip Halsman he managed to create absolutely incredible and surreal pictures.

Love art and enjoy the work of Salvador Dali!


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