Salvador Dali :: Biography

Salvador Dali precise and detailed painful reality and, placed them inside somber and depressing landscapes as in The persistence of Memory' in 1931 (Smith, 2002, 1/1). His paintings showed a surrealist maturity since he was twenty. From 1926 to 1929, Dali begun making objects loaded with modern sexual symbols. For example, showing a dirty figure filled with excrement as in 'The Lugubrious Game' done in 1929. At this period, surrealists were very attracted to Salvador Dali because of his strong personality and his violent works and paintings full of sexual and excrements allusions (Neret, 2000, p.21). The trompe-l'oeuil photographs, by Salvador Dali, took surrealist paintings to another level by using techniques never used before. These paintings are filled with unusual shapes, double-sided figures and, anamorphosis, that are distorted images that could be well understood only if seen from a certain angle. They made him "a quarter century in advance, the patron saint of American photo-realists" (NÃ ©ret, 2000, p.27). They were used to transcribe the image of Dali's dreams. This was a revelation in his surrealist paintings mainly caused by a very special person in Dali's life called Gala. As a person, Salvador Dali was very special and had a revelation in his life by meeting Helena Diakonoff or Gala. It all begun by a visit of Andre Breton, Louis Aragon and, Paul Eluard to Dali. They were three masterminds of the surrealism movement. At this time, Gala was Paul Eluard's wife and the minute she entered Salvador's home everything changed in his life. She was for Dali, "the woman of his childhood dream"