Dalí, Salvador (1904-89): Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer. After passing through phases of Cubism, Futurism and Metaphysical painting, he joined the Surrealists in 1929 and his talent for self-publicity rapidly made him the most famous representative of the movement. Throughout his life he cultivated eccentricity and exhibitionism (one of his most famous acts was appearing in a diving suit at the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition in 1936), claiming that this was the source of his creative energy. He took over the Surrealist theory of automatism but transformed it into a more positive method which he named `critical paranoia'. According to this theory one should cultivate genuine delusion as in clinical paranoia while remaining residually aware at the back of one's mind that the control of the reason and will has been deliberately suspended. He claimed that this method should be used not only in artistic and poetical creation but also in the affairs of daily life. His paintings employed a meticulous academic technique that was contradicted by the unreal `dream' space he depicted and by the strangely hallucinatory characters of his imagery. He described his pictures as `hand-painted dream photographs' and had certain favorite and recurring images, such as the human figure with half-open drawers protruding from it, burning giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as if made from melting wax (The Persistence of Memory, MOMA, New York; 1931). In 1937 Dalí visited Italy and adopted a more traditional style; this together with his political views (he was a supporter of General Franco) led Breton to expel him from the Surrealist ranks. He moved to the USA in 1940 and remained there until 1955. During this time he devoted himself largely to self-publicity; his paintings were often on religious themes (The Crucifixion of St John of the Cross, Glasgow Art Gallery, 1951), although sexual subjects and pictures centring on his wife Gala were also continuing preoccupations. In 1955 he returned to Spain and in old age became a recluse. Apart from painting, Dalí's output included sculpture, book illustration, jewellery design, and work for the theatre. In collaboration with the director Luis Buñuel he also made the first Surrealist films---Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Age d'or (1930)---and he contributed a dream sequence to Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). He also wrote a novel, Hidden Faces (1944) and several volumes of flamboyant autobiography. Although he is undoubtedly one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, his status is controversial; many critics consider that he did little if anything of consequence after his classic Surrealist works of the 1930s. There are museums devoted to Dalí's work in Figueras, his home town in Spain, and in St Petersburg in Florida.

Artist:      SALVADOR DALI (1904-1989)
Title:       Muchachade espaldas 1925
Medium:  Facsimile on canvas signed in plate
Image Size:  28 x 19 cm 
Price (framed):    SOLD

Provenance: Galeria Aniela purchased at Figures, the Foundation Gala-Salvador Dali, Vegap 2002

NOTES:
Facsimile on canvas signed in plate, MLD 06. - Dali Muchacha a la ventana. Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. Museum line printed in Spain D.L.: M-23332-1993.

Artist:      SALVADOR DALI (1904-1989)
Title:       Jeune fille a la fenetre 1925
Medium:  Facsimile on canvas signed in plate
Image Size:      28 x 19 cm 
Price (framed):    SOLD

Provenance: Galeria Aniela purchased at Figures, the Foundation Gala-Salvador Dali, Vegap 2002

NOTES:
Facsimile on canvas signed in plate, MLD 07. - Dali Muchacha de espaldas. Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. Museum line printed in Spain D.L.: M-23331-1993.

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Salvador Dali is considered as the greatest artist of the surrealist art movement and one of the greatest masters of art of the twentieth century. During his lifetime the public got a picture of an eccentric and caused a lot of controversy. After his death in 1989 his name remained in the headlines. Dali worked hard to establish an image of an excentric genius. Probably he only followed the rules of marketing a product - his own art. And the name of the game is "It is not important what you do as long as you are in the headlines."

Meeting Gala was the most important event in the artist's life and decisive for his future career. She was a Russian immigrant and ten years older than Dali. When he met her, she was married to Paul Eluard. Gala was born in Kazan, Russia, in 1894. In 1913, suffering from tuberculosis, she was sent by her parents to the Swiss sanatorium in Clavadel, where she met the French poet Paul Éluard. They married in 1917 and, under the influence of her husband and his friends André Breton, Louis Aragon and Max Ernst she burst into the effervescent Parisian Surrealist movement. In the summer of 1929 Éluard and Gala, together with some other friends, visited the young painter Salvador Dalí in his Portlligat refuge, near Cadaqués. During that short stay Gala and Dalí fell in love with each other and she took a firm decision: "We will never again be apart." Gala decided to stay with Dali. From that time on Gala became the model, muse and inseparable companion of one of the 20th century's most famous artists, whom she followed in his stays in various parts of Europe and the United States. She became his companion, his muse, his sexual partner, his model in numerous art works and his business manager. For him she was everything. Most of all Gala was a stabilizing factor in his life. And she managed his success in the 1930s with exhibitions in Europe and the United States. Gala was legally divorced from her husband in 1932. In 1934 Dali and Gala were married in a civil ceremony in Paris and in 1958 in church after Gala's former husband had died in 1952. In 1948 Dali and Gala returned to Europe, spending most of their time either in their residence in Lligat/Spain or in Paris/France or in New York. Dali developed a lively interest in science, religion and history. He integrated things into his art that he had picked up from popular science magazines. Another source of inspiration were the great classical masters of painting like Raphael, Velasquez or the French painter Ingres. The artist commented his shift in style with the words: "To be a surrealist forever is like spending your life painting nothing but eyes and noses."  In 1958 the artist began his series of large sized history paintings. He painted one monumental painting every year during the summer months in Lligat. The most famous one, The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, can be seen at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg in Florida. It is breath-taking. The artist's late art works combine more than ever his perfect and meticulous painting technique with his fantastic and limitless imaginations. From around 1965 on, the couple was seen less frequently together. But Gala continued to manage Dali's business affairs. Salvador Dali is the only known artist who had two museums dedicated exclusively to his works at lifetime. The Museum was the former Municipal Theater of Figueres. In 1918, when Salvador Dali was only fourteen years old, it had shown his first public exhibition. Since 1970 the artist had dedicated his energy to transform the former Municipal Theater into a museum and art gallery. From 1971 to 1980 Gala made stays in Púbol Castle, where she was buried. The castle, known now as Gala Dalí Castle Museum-House, has been open to the public since 1996. In 1974 the Theatro Museo Dali was officially opened. In 1980 Dali was forced to retire due to palsy, a motor disorder, that caused a permanent trembling and weakness of his hands. He was not able to hold a brush any more. The fact that he could not follow his vocation and passion of painting and the news of Gala's death in 1982 left him with deep depressions. After Gala's death he moved to Pubol, a castle, he had bought and decorated for Gala. In 1984, when he was lying in bed, a fire broke out and he suffered sever burns. Two years later, a pacemaker had to be implanted. Towards the end of his life, Dali lived in the tower of his own museum where he died on January 23, 1989 from heart failure.