An eccentric and masterful Surrealist in painting and in life, Salvador Dal wrote in his diary
two years before entering art school in Madrid during the early 1920s: "I'll be a genius...
Perhaps I'll be despised and misunderstood, but I'll be a genius, a great genius." Throughout
his life,Dal cultivated eccentricity and exaggerated a predisposition towards narcissistic
exhibitionism, claiming that his creative energies were derived from it. The spectrum of
imagery from fantastic to nightmarish visions which Dal produced are the supreme evidence
of those idiosyncrasies.
Born in Figueras, Spain, Dal first studied at the cole des Beaux Arts in Madrid and
was influenced by Metaphysical painters de Chirico and Carra while there. Equally admiring
the meticulous realism of the Pre-Raphaelites and French 19th century painters, he began to
blend conceptual styles and technique. Beginning in 1927, Dal exhibited in Madrid and
Barcelona, earning a reputation for being one of the most promising younger painters. A visit
to Paris in 1928 brought him into contact with Picasso and the Surrealists Mir, Masson,
Ernst, Tanguy and Andr Breton; shortly thereafter, his first exhibition brought Dal firmly into
the Surrealist movement where he was a leading figure during the next ten years.
Dal transformed the definition of Surrealism, which combined pure psychic
automatism expressing the unconscious process of thought, dream and associated realities to
include what he called "critical paranoia," a theory that embraced delusion while remaining
aware that reason has been deliberately suspended. With his realistic detail, Dal's paintings
describe a hallucinatory reality which is often contradicted by the vision and hallucinatory
character his imagery describes; "The Persistence of Memory" (1931), depicting perfectly
detailed clocks melting in a Catalan landscape, conveys that theory.
Although a collaborator with Surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel, Dal, whose work was
identified with Surrealism more than any other artist by the public, was expelled from the
movement by Breton in 1937. After visiting Italy the same year, he briefly changed his style of
painting to reflect the academic influence of Raphael before returning to a more private
mythology. By 1940 he left for 15 years in the United States. With his first retrospective at The
Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1941, Dal devoted his energies towards publicity during
those years before returning to Spain in 1955. Included in major museums worldwide, Dal's
work continues to fascinate, most recently with a major exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in 1994 of the celebrated early Surrealist years.
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