Salvador Dali | Signs of the Zodiac, 1967

In the late 1960’s, Leon Amiel, a well-known publisher of Dali’s works, commissioned Dali to create the molds for each of the 12 signs of the Zodiac based on Dali’s Zodiac gouaches and lithographs. Twelve Original Hand Signed Numbered Salvador Dali Lithograph - Signs of the Zodiac, New York e Paris, 1967.

A modern master of the Surreal arts, Salvador Dali’s works continually challenged convention by questioning the antithesis of surrealism: our normal sense of the “real". Surrealism’s objective was to make accessible to art the realms of the unconscious, irrational and imaginary.

Sagittarius

Salvador Dali | Surrealist painter and sculptor

This is part 1 of 3-part post on the works of Salvador Dali.

• Salvador Dali | Surrealist painter and sculptor🎨.
• Salvador Dali | Surrealist painter and sculptor | Part. 2🎨;
• Salvador Dali | Self-portraits🎨;
• Salvador Dali | Watercolors🎨;
• Salvador Dali | Drawing🎨;
• Salvador Dali | Quotes / Aforismi🎨;
• Gala, la passione surreale di Salvador Dali🎨;
• Salvador Dali | Zodiac signs🎨.

Salvador Dali | Self-portraits

Salvador Dalí started to paint self-portraits very early on.

In the ones made during adolescence, Dalí represents himself with a distant attitude towards his companions, but at the same time wishing to make an impact on them (or to provoke them) and on the public in general.

Like other adolescents, he sought through his appearance an affirmation of his own personality, wearing long hair and sideburns, and dressing extravagantly.

Salvador Dali 1941 Soft self-portrait with grilled Bacon

Spanish Art History and Sitemap

Spanish art has been an important contributor to Western art and Spain has produced many famous and influential artists including Velázquez, Goya and Picasso.

Spanish art was particularly influenced by Italy and France during the Baroque and Neoclassical periods, but Spanish art has often had very distinctive characteristics, partly explained by the Moorish heritage in Spain (especially in Andalusia), and through the political and cultural climate in Spain during the Counter-Reformation and the subsequent eclipse of Spanish power under the Bourbon dynasty.

Pablo Picasso - Embrace, 1900

Gala, la passione surreale di Salvador Dali

Gala, Elena Ivanovna Diakonova (1894-1982), moglie del poeta Paul Eluard, conosciuta nel 1929, fu la prima amante e poi moglie di Salvador Dalí 1904-1989, il pittore spagnolo degli "orologi molli"e delle "giraffe in fiamme".

L'incontro con la moglie di Eluard, Gala, sarà folgorante tanto che, nell'estate dello stesso anno la conduce nella sua terra natale per dichiararle il suo amore.

Symbolism Art History and Sitemap

Symbolism initially developed as a French literary movement in the 1880s, gaining popular credence with the publication in 1886 of Jean Moréas’ manifesto in Le Figaro.

Reacting against the rationalism and materialism that had come to dominate Western European culture, Moréas proclaimed the validity of pure subjectivity and the expression of an idea over a realistic description of the natural world.

This philosophy, which would incorporate the poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s conviction that reality was best expressed through poetry because it paralleled nature rather than replicating it, became a central tenet of the movement.

Marie Spartali Stillman (1844-1927) Love's Messenger, 1885

Surrealist Artists | History and Sitemap

Surrealism originated in the late 1910s and early '20s as a literary movement that experimented with a new mode of expression called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to release the unbridled imagination of the subconscious.

Officially consecrated in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by the poet and critic André Breton (1896-1966), Surrealism became an international intellectual and political movement.

Breton, a trained psychiatrist, along with French poets Louis Aragon (1897-1982), Paul Éluard (1895-1952) and Philippe Soupault (1897-1990), were influenced by the psychological theories and dream studies of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and the political ideas of Karl Marx (1818-1883).

Michael Alfano | Figurative and surrealistic sculptures

Andrey Gorenkov / Андрей Горенков, 1969 | Surrealist painter

Russian artist🎨 Andrei Gorenkov was born in the town of Zhigulevsk. Engaged in painting since 1990.

Behind the artist a large number of solo exhibitions in such cities as: Zhigulevsk, Neftegorsk, Tolyatti, Naberezhnye Chelny, Nizhny Novgorod, Cheboksary, Paris, Hamburg, Moscow.

Creativity of the artist Andrei Gorenkov is often compared with the early works of Salvador Dali🎨.

Salvador Dali | Drawing

Drawing is perhaps one of the most natural and rudimentary activities we undertake as humans. As soon as we get our hands on something that leaves a mark, we begin to draw.

In art, it is considered a fundamental skill to master. For Salvador Dalí drawing was both a means and an end.

Meaning, a lot of what we have that count as “drawings” from Salvador Dalí are studies for much larger works, they are representations of his thought process, his creativity shifting and growing, and an insight to his unique perspective of the world.

Salvador Dali | Watercolors

Salvador Dalí🎨 produced over 1,500 paintings in his career, in addition to producing illustrations for books, lithographs, designs for theater sets and costumes, a great number of drawings🎨, dozens of sculptures, and various other projects, including an animated short film for Disney.

Salvador Dali: "Adoro i miei nemici quando sono intelligenti"

"Ho sfondato il muro della spudoratezza con una disciplina da caserma" - confidava Salvador Dalí in una intervista del 1961 alla giornalista e scrittrice italiana Oriana Fallaci (1929-2006), mentre, nelle successive riflessioni tuonava contro gli pseudo moralisti: "Non sono io il pagliaccio ma lo è questa società mostruosamente cinica e così ingenuamente incosciente che gioca a fingere di essere seria per meglio nascondere la propria follia".

Dario Campanile, 1948

Born in Rome, Italian painter Dario Campanile started to sketch as a very young child. At the age of six, his talent for art was encouraged with the gift of a small set of watercolors from an uncle, himself a painter.

When he was 14, Campanile was bedridden with a kidney ailment for three months, and his father gave him his first oil paints to cheer him up.

As soon as he began to work with them, there was a sense of familiarity of being able to easily express himself in this medium. This experience influenced him profoundly to continue with his art.

Zoltan Molnos | The Transylvanian Dalí

It is now more than 80 years since the Surrealism, in a smoky Parisian café, was officially born, After long decades of peak and slow agony, when the world was still celebrating its most famous master, Salvador Dali, far from the French and Spanish lands, in a small Transylvanian town, inhabited by hard-working people of Hungarian minority, the surrealism had its second birth on the canvas of a that time unknown young Romanian painter, Zoltán Molnos.

It might seem curious that the surrealism, the most spectacular limb of the avant-garde movement, which had its philosophy in protesting against the inhumanity of the “civilised” world, had its renaissance in a city from Romania.

Edward Pustovoitov, 1964 | Fantasy painter

Эдуард Пустовойтов was born in Makeyevka, Ukraine.

He gained the Designer’s qualification at Odessa Institute of theatrical and artistic studies.

Irresistible desire of travelling once led Pustovoitov to come to Latvia and to join the Riga nautical college; after graduating he worked as a sailor at Latvian Shipping.

Salvador Dali and the Science

Dalí was a versatile artist. Some of his more popular works are sculptures and other objects, and he is also noted for his contributions to theater, fashion, and photography, among other areas.

Dalí's life-long interest in science and mathematics was often reflected in his work. His soft watches have been interpreted as references to Einstein's theory of the relativity of time and space.

Images of atomic particles appeared in his work soon after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and strands of D.N.A. appeared from the mid-1950s.

In 1958 he wrote in his Anti-Matter Manifesto: "In the Surrealist period, I wanted to create the iconography of the interior world and the world of the marvelous, of my father Freud. Today, the exterior world and that of physics have transcended the one of psychology. My father today is Dr. Heisenberg".

The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954) harks back to The Persistence of Memory (1931) and in portraying that painting in fragmentation and disintegration has been interpreted as a reference to Heisenberg's quantum mechanics.

Stuart Dunkel, 1952 | Classical whimsey

Born in New Jersey Stuart Dunkel began playing classical music and painting at the age of 5. He went on to study music music at Boston University, Mannes College of Music, the Juilliard School (Doctorate).

He also studied art at the Boston Museum School, Kent State, the Academy of Realist Art, the Seattle Academy of Art and privately with renowned artists.

After a career as a musician playing with top orchestras around the world, Stuart switched to fine art at the age of 42.

Damian Elwes, 1960 | Conceptual painter

Damian Elwes has painted many of the major studios of the twentieth century including those of Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Frida Kahlo, René Magritte, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí.

Damian Elwes lives and works in Santa Monica, California.

Giacometti's Studio

Salvador Dali | Surrealist Newton, 1977

This sculpture was born of Salvador Dalí's respect for Sir Isaac Newton and his discovery of the law of gravity, represented by the famed falling apple. Dalí has pierced the figure with two large spaces: one which portrays the absence of Newton's unique physical body, while the other space clearly displays the lack of his singular mind. 

Pavel Mitkov, 1977 | Impressionist /Abstract painter

Award winning painter Pavel Mitkov, born in Sofia, Bulgaria, is the most successful and collected Bulgarian artist in the European connoisseur of art community in recent years. Extremely talented, his philosophy of life pertains to wisdom unusual for his young age. The paintings of Pavel Mitkov reflect not only his natural artistic talent, but also his passion for painting.

Vicente Romero Redondo, 1956 | Figurative painter

Spanish painter Vicente Romero Redondo was born in Madrid as the eldest of four sons. Due to the work of his father, he grew up in many different towns all over Spain.

The family moved back to Madrid when he was 15 years old.

During his childhood, his parents thought he would dedicate his life to painting, as his caricatures of schoolmates and teachers were famous in every school where he studied and one would rarely see him without a pencil and a notepad in his hands.

Romero achieved his dream: he began studies at the High School for Art San Fernando, the most prestigious art school in Spain - Salvador Dali studied there from 1922-1926.