Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was a prominent Spanish surrealist painter born in Figueres, Spain. He attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Following this, in 1925, Dali held his first one-man show in Barcelona, which ultimately started his career.
Dali soon became a leader of the Surrealist Movement. His painting, “The Persistence of Memory”, shown above, is still one of the most well known surrealist works of today.
By 1940, Dali was moving away from his surrealist style towards a new type of painting that revolved around science, history, and religion. Of these works, the most popular are “The Hallucinogenic Toreador”, “The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus”, and “The Sacrament of the Last Supper”, shown below.
Returning to his hometown, Dali opened the Teatro Museo in Figueres, Spain, in 1974. In addition, he opened retrospectives in Paris and London. Over the course of his entire career, Salvador Dali was not limited to any individual style, as he experimented with many different types of media.
Dali produced more than 1,500 paintings, illustrated books, created lithographs, designed costumes and theatre sets, crafted dozens of drawings and sculptures, and even produced an animated short film for Disney. Aside from his renowned work, Dali’s famous moustache gave him great publicity and aided his legacy as a cultural icon for the bizarre and surreal.
To see more of Salvador Dali’s work, check out Graphis Magazine, Issue 18.
