Salvador Dalí

Surrealism

Surrealism declared dream, chance and the unconscious to be the source of art.

💡 Did you know? Dalí painted his dream images with the precision of an old master: which is exactly what makes them so unsettling.

The Persistence of Memory

The small 1931 canvas hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

💡 Did you know? Dalí is said to have got the idea for the soft watches while looking at melting Camembert.

paranoiac-critical method

Dalí deliberately put himself into a state in which he saw double images and delusions.

💡 Did you know? Many of his pictures are visual puzzles: depending on how you look, they show two different motifs.

Gala

Gala, born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, had previously been married to the poet Paul Éluard.

💡 Did you know? Gala also ran Dalí's business: he often signed works only once she had negotiated the price.

Figueres

Figueres lies in the province of Girona in north-eastern Spain.

💡 Did you know? Dalí was buried in the crypt of his own theatre-museum in Figueres.

Luis Buñuel

„Un Chien Andalou“ from 1929 is regarded as the surrealist film par excellence.

💡 Did you know? Its notorious opening scene, in which an eye is sliced open, still shocks audiences today.

Spellbound

In 1945 Hitchcock deliberately wanted sharp, clear dream images instead of the usual haze: so he hired Dalí.

💡 Did you know? Much of the elaborately filmed sequence ended up on the cutting-room floor.

Walt Disney

The film was begun in 1945/46, then shelved and only completed by Disney in 2003.

💡 Did you know? „Destino“ was nominated for an Oscar after its belated completion.

moustache

He modelled it on the moustache of the Spanish Baroque painter Diego Velázquez.

💡 Did you know? When his grave was opened in 2017 for a paternity test, the waxed moustache was still intact.

Avida Dollars

The name is an anagram of „Salvador Dalí“ and roughly means „eager for dollars“.

💡 Did you know? Breton accused Dalí of cashing in on the surrealist movement and expelled him from the group.

Chupa Chups

Legend has it Dalí designed the daisy logo for the Spanish lollipop brand in under an hour.

💡 Did you know? It was also his idea to put the logo on top of the lollipop so that it is always fully visible.

Figueres

From 1960 he built it into the ruins of the old town theatre of his home town.

💡 Did you know? It is the most visited museum in Spain after the Prado and also Dalí's burial place.

from above

The 1951 painting hangs in Glasgow and shows Christ without nails, wounds or crown of thorns.

💡 Did you know? The perspective goes back to a drawing by the 16th-century mystic John of the Cross.

lobster

In the „Lobster Telephone“ a plaster lobster sits where you would normally speak.

💡 Did you know? From the same period comes his sofa shaped like the lips of the actress Mae West.

long thin legs

The stilt-like legs make the heavy animals look almost weightless.

💡 Did you know? They often carry obelisks on their backs: an allusion to a sculpture by Bernini in Rome.

Federico García Lorca

The two met at the student residence in Madrid.

💡 Did you know? Lorca dedicated an ode to Dalí; their close friendship broke down when Dalí left for Paris.

after his brother

The family's first son, also called Salvador, had died nine months before Dalí was born.

💡 Did you know? His parents took the young Salvador to the grave and told him he was his brother's reincarnation.

Salvador Dalí