Salvador Dali Art

Dali, Salvador (May 11, 1904, Figueres, Spain - January 23, 1989, Figueres, Spain), one of the greatest Spanish painters of all time, and one of the most important figures in the history of the modern art movement. Both Dali's extraordinary talent and odd personality helped him to rise above the rest of the Surrealists of the 20th century. Dali greatly popularized Surrealism in Europe and the U.S. with his unique painting styles and unusual ideology. His artwork and influences can be seen almost everywhere around the world. His explicit and controversial Surrealist paintings are some of the most famous, and infamous, paintings of the 1900's, and his rebellious and independent attitude towards art and politics set him aside from other painters, leaving a mark on Surrealist painting forever. Few artists have had a greater impact on 20'th art than Salvador Dali. He is widely acknowledged to be a pioneer - and the living embodiment - of Surrealist art, a bold movement that emerged in Europe in the 1920's and flourished for generations thereafter, embracing not only fine art but literature, music, philosophy, psychology, and even popular culture. Surrealism, art movement that explored and celebrated the realm of dreams and the unconscious mind through the creation of visual art, poetry, and motion pictures. Among surrealism's most important contributions was the invention of new artistic techniques that tapped into the artist's unconscious mind. Dali's surrealistic paintings depict dream imagery and everyday objects in unexpected forms, characterized by meticulous draftsmanship and realistic detail, with brilliant colors heightened by transparent glazes. Dali's striking images, such as the melting clock and the burning giraffe, have become icons of Western culture. The very word surreal has entered our vernacular, with a connotation that is still quite close to that intended by Dali and fellow surrealists. To them, the surreal is that which is beyond the ordinary and the conventional, that which is strange and bizarre, lying just below the surface, challenging our normal sense of the real. In our modern, technological world, in which assumptions and credos that for centuries were taken for granted are crumbling before the onslaught of science and liberation movements, in which physical reality itself seems to be dissolving into a black hole of ambiguity and relativism - Dali's surrealist perspective has become increasingly appropriate.