Salvador Dalí
Born in Figueres (Spain) on 11 May 1904.
Died in Figueres (Spain) on 23 January 1989.
Spanish · Surrealism · the paranoiac-critical method · Dalí’s classicism and post-war nuclear mysticism.
Salvador Dalí stands among the most inventive and theatrically compelling artistic figures of the twentieth century. After studying drawing with Juan Núñez in Figueres, he continued his training at Madrid’s Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. His years at the Residencia de Estudiantes brought him into contact with an exceptional intellectual generation that included Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel, Maruja Mallo and Rafael Barradas.
Following early explorations of Impressionism, Cubism and rigorous classicism, Dalí moved close to the Paris Surrealist circle in the late 1920s. His meeting with Gala and his collaboration with Buñuel on Un chien andalou proved decisive. In the early 1930s he formulated the paranoiac-critical method, a means of releasing multiple images and unexpected associations, which he translated into paintings of illusionistic precision, inhabited by mental landscapes, ambiguous figures and recurring motifs.
His practice nevertheless extends beyond historical Surrealism. Painting, drawing, printmaking, objects, writing, stage design, film and publishing projects form a body of work of exceptional range. After his years in the United States between 1940 and 1948, Dalí developed paintings in which the legacy of Renaissance masters, religious imagery and an interest in atomic physics converge in compositions of striking visionary force.
His work is held, among other institutions, by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid; Tête Raphaëlesque éclatée is shown at the National Galleries of Scotland on long-term loan from a private collection. The original signed lithograph Tête raphaélesque éclatée presented by Swiss Art Gallery belongs naturally within this body of work.
The works by Salvador Dalí presented by Swiss Art Gallery extend this artistic journey and take their place naturally within this corpus.
