﻿ Salvador Dalí. Surrealist master. TASCHEN Books
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Salvador Dalí

The zaniest Surrealist of them all


Salvador Dalí

The name Salvador Dalí brings to mind bizarre dreamscapes, frightening and fascinating landscapes of incongruous arrangements, what the artist himself called, “hand-painted dream photographs.” Spanish painter, sculptor, draftsman, writer, and film-maker, Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) has become shorthand for the surrealist movement itself, so famous are his paintings. He was one of the first artists to apply Freudian psychoanalysis to art, combining visual techniques like pointillism, holography, and trompe l’oeil, to render a strange new visual language of symbols.

Many of Dalí’s motifs, like melting clocks and watches, lobster telephones, and abstracted organic objects - eggs, ants, snails, sea urchins, elephants, and locusts - have become hallmarks of the Surrealist group. Salvador Dalí’s work characteristically juxtaposes optical illusions and negative space. The visual effects are landscapes as infinite and as unknown as the human mind. Many of his works featured in the 1959 exhibition Homage to Surrealism, which also contained works of Joan Miró, André Breton, Enrique Tábara, and Eugenio Granell. TASCHEN books record Dalí’s artistic repertoire in both the Basic Art and Bibliotheca Universalis series of books. Included in these books are key paintings like Sistine Madonna, The Persistence of Memory, Metamorphosis of Narcissus, and Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. The books also feature artworks in other media that have impacted the culture at large such as Dalí’s Mae West Lips Sofa which influenced pop art and his stunning film Un chien andalou, an important work for experimental cinema.

Known for his eccentric and grandiose manner, Salvador Dalí was an entertaining yet controversial figure. He was inspired by his wife and muse Gala, and often featured her in his paintings. Together they escaped civil war in Spain but were broken by the horrors it produced. Dalí’s war pain is often cited as visible in the work Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War). With his unsettling images of dreams and mysterious lands, Dalí attempted to discredit and escape the harsh realities of the world.